


The Tales of Loki and Thor

by CatalenaMara



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fantasy Medieval AU, Inspired by Scheherazade, Jealousy, M/M, Other canon MCU characters mentioned, Period typical views on class, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Prostitution, Story within a Story, The only archive warning this story requires is for violence, Witch Hunts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:47:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21588667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatalenaMara/pseuds/CatalenaMara
Summary: Loki has disappeared.  When Thor finds him he learns that Loki has been cursed, and the only way to gain his freedom is for Thor to listen to tales of other lives they’ve lived together.  More than that – he must relive those lives.  Loki then tells one of these tales, about a selfish, spoiled younger prince named Thor, restless and bored by a long siege of an enemy castle, who meets a camp follower named Loki.   But the secret Loki is hiding may destroy them both.
Relationships: Loki/Thor
Comments: 40
Kudos: 99
Collections: Thorki Big Bang 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [ racconsito ](https://twitter.com/RaccoonBuebito?s=09) for all of your great artwork! It was a delight working with you, in exchanging ideas, and discussing every stage of this work. 
> 
> Many thanks, as well, to my betas for your excellent insights and ability to keep me focused on my path:[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Tenaya/profile)[ **Tenaya**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Tenaya/) and [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/profile)[](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Muriel_Perun/)**Muriel_Perun**.
> 
> Many thanks also to the Mods for organizing this Big Bang and being so helpful during the process. Much appreciated!
> 
> NOTES: Sordinn is another word meaning the same as argr. Thor and Loki are approximately the same age in the medieval portion of the story as they were at the beginning of the first “Thor” movie.

Cold gripped Thor‘s bones, bitter as wormwood. The dim witchlight dancing in front of him left every corner of the cavern in darkness. Every inhalation brought the stab of ice inside his lungs, every exhalation shone like a visible beacon in the air. Frost clung to the crystal stalactites hanging like spears from the cavern’s distant ceiling, and the uneven flooring was crowded with the thicker, chunkier stalagmites rising to meet them. An occasional glitter of ice on the cave walls, caught by the light of his torch, receded back into darkness as he passed. 

Somewhere ahead, a greenish light flickered and danced, appearing, disappearing, reappearing; a will-o’-the-wisp leading him on. He followed, alert, tense, hand hovering near Mjolnir’s haft. 

Loki was here. Somewhere. Taken by who or what he did not know, his only clue a whisper in the darkness in his dreams, leading him here. But with every step he took, his sense of danger, of the fear that he would never see his brother again, increased, a weight upon his soul heavier than any physical burden could be.

Invisible things in the high reaches of the cavern squeaked and fluttered. Several times chittering things winged past his head, whisper-touching his face with skin and fur. Each time he whipped his head to seek them out, turning wildly, eyes straining, but each time he saw nothing in the encroaching darkness. 

Beneath all the high-pitched sounds was another, the sound of someone whispering at a far distance, a last fading echo-response. A voice he knew and yet could not recognize. A voice that had awakened him from a dream and spoke of Loki and sent him on his quest here.

Mjolnir, on his belt, thrummed, asking for his hand. He did not touch her. There was no battle to be had here, none that she could fight, nothing in the frosty air and the seemingly animate darkness to name as enemy, as foe.

The flooring, filled with pebbles and sharp-sided rocks, rose and dipped and slanted beneath his feet. He continued on, surefooted, passing through a thicket of stalagmites taller than he, always following that elusive light as it danced above the cave floor. 

Suddenly, the stalagmites ended, and he stopped at the edge of a perfectly circular space almost entirely enclosed by rock formations. 

At the center of the chamber stalactites and stalagmites, like dragon’s teeth, formed a wall. Their fanglike forms glittered with thousands of colors, soft roses and golds, violets and intense greens and blues, quartz and tourmaline and malachite and chrysocolla, all glowing from within each structure, all casting their light on the rock-strewn sandy floor.

The hair stood up on the back of his neck as waves of seiðr crashed over him, each a message of warning and welcome, plea and threat.

He paced slowly along the many parts of that crystal wall, trying to peer between their tightly-knit sides. He continued moving until he realized he had traversed a perfect circle and was back to the mouth of the passageway he had used to enter this place.

The crackle of power seemed strongest here, and he grasped two of the stalagmites, power crawling along his fingers like the tread of insects, unpleasant and strong.

He held fast, even as the intensity increased until it felt like fire. “Loki?” he whispered.

A voice threaded through the chamber, distant, eldritch, sexless, denatured of identity. “You can enter. Once.”

Thor looked wildly around, but no one was there. “Who is here?”

Then again, fainter now, but still clear. “You can depart. Once.”

“Show yourself!” Thor demanded. 

But only silence answered.

Thor stared at the impenetrable crystal barrier, and when the colors turned to shades of emerald and malachite and jade he stepped forward to the very edge. “I would enter,” he said stoutly.

A shudder, a shimmer, and the barrier dissolved before him, just wide enough to allow him passage. He strode through onto a white sand floor, gaze fixed on the still figure at its absolute center. Floating three feet above the ground.

Thor’s heart raced as he stopped an arm’s length away, the figure’s bowed head at a level with Thor’s own. It was sitting cross-legged, its head and shoulders bent, its waist-length black hair cascading forward, obscuring its face and much of its body, leaving only a few patches of naked white skin visible.

“Loki?” Thor whispered.

Moving slowly, as if every tiny shift was an enormous effort, inch by inch its back straightened and its shoulders rose, but its head remained bowed and its hands remained resting on its naked thighs. Then its long-fingered, black-nailed hands turned sideways and moved, parting the screen of hair, revealing a downturned bone-pale face and a female body.

“Loki?” Thor asked again, stepping forward.

The head slowly tilted up, revealing a wolf’s grin. Equally slowed, the figure’s legs moved from their crossed position, straightening until they barely met the ground.

Thor stepped forward, reached to touch, then snatched his hand away, cradling it to his side. Cold, intense immense cold surrounded the figure in an impenetrable aura.

“Loki?” he said again.

The image flickered. Stuttered. Shifted in parts. 

Grew, suddenly, to a fire-eyed Jotunn two heads taller than he. Then pieces vanished, quickly replaced, part by part, by a pale green-eyed man with hair the color of flame. Still naked, still shifting, the hips and cock of a man, the breasts of a woman. Then Loki’s face, half Aesir, half Jotunn, staring at him out of wounded eyes. One emerald, one scarlet.

For one brief instant, the Loki he knew. Then wolf. Then magpie. Then the woman again, face blank and pale and lifeless as a statue.

Then she opened her eyes. Crimson lips widened into a toothy grimace. “You came,” she said in a flat rusty voice. 

“Who bespelled you so?”

The image flickered again, and a near-naked Jotunn stared at him out of scarlet eyes. “I cannot say.”

 **“Why was this done to you?”** His pulse was racing, heart pounding, every muscle taut in search of an enemy.

“I wanted to understand the heart of things.” He moved, and a golden gown enfolded her, crinkling and rattling as it shifted to armor and then to dark unadorned religious garb. Her hands folded together, black nails like talons extending from his fingertips. He drew in a breath, blew it out. It sparked and smoked and then Thor saw great curving horns crowning his brow, a diadem encircling his black hair. Scarlet eyes regarded him. 

**“ _What_ was done to you?” **Thor demanded, adrenaline pumping, surging, lusting for an enemy to fight and slay.

Loki’s Jotunn voice was like the rumble of moving glacier ice. “I am cursed to take the shape of everyone I have been in all the cycles of time.”

“What – “ Thor began. He sucked in a breath, trying to wrap his mind around what seemed a nonsensical thought. He’d heard of such thoughts, the coin of philosophers and mages, complicated words that he never considered needing to know. “You are all these…” His voice trailed off as Loki was now a boy, now a girl. The girl morphed into a young man and then a young woman, each image flickering by so fast Thor could barely take in one view before another replaced it. Loki lifted her head up and Thor saw a thousand things in her eyes.

“Stop the shifting! I want to see my brother,” Thor insisted, wanting to grasp him, hold him, stop this from happening.

“I – cannot – ” Loki gasped out, an old woman now.

“ – stop – it – ”

“Stop this!” Thor roared, looking all around them, ready for combat. The crystalline prison gleamed its thousand colors. Above, only impenetrable shadow, hinting of other things beyond. His hands clenched in frustrated helplessness, denied of anything he could attack. He bared his teeth, turned back to Loki and found his brother standing before him in his court armor, Gungnir in his hands. 

“I am not always your brother.” His voice was clear, calm, steady. His eyes were like icy emerald chips. He was suddenly a tiny, red-eyed Jotunn child, barely up to Thor’s thighs. 

“In every way that matters, you are,” Thor said, adamant and unmovable in his conviction.

“More than that.” A crown of ice upon her head. She licked her blue lips, lust in her eyes. “Brother.”

“Let me take you away from this place!” Thor insisted, and tried to approach again, but the sudden drop in temperature warned him back.

“Not possible. Brother.” A jerk of Loki’s head and Thor looked back to confirm what was no surprise to him: the stalactite-stalagmite wall had reformed behind him. He did not need to touch it to be sure it was as solid as before. 

There was no way out.

He placed on hand on Mjolnir’s haft. 

Loki shook her head. “Useless,” she said, but her voice doubled, trebled, chorused until it was as if a thousand creatures were answering, each one slight instance out of sync with the rest.

“The Loki I know would never give up.”

Loki, now male again, laughed, baring sharp teeth, and began a slow circuit around him. 

“The Loki I know would go around, he would disappear and reappear, he would call up all manner of illusions,” Thor said insistently. “But he would never give up.”

“You can leave any time you want to.” Loki’s tone was light, but there was despair in his eyes.

“I'm not going alone.” Then Thor stared at him in horror as he understood what Loki was saying. It was impossible for Loki to leave. But **he** could leave at any time. But could never come back. _“You can depart. Once.”_ The words echoed in his head. Thor realized the look in Loki’s eyes meant he actually believed Thor might do it. Might leave. “I won’t go without you.” Thor stood, unmoving. “Never. There must be a way.”

“The choice is not mine,” Loki said obliquely.

“Whose, then?” Thor felt a rising fury, but had nothing to direct it against. Whoever, whatever had captured Loki, it loved riddles every bit as much as his brother did.

Loki stared at him, eyes emerald again.

Thor suddenly understood. “Mine, then,” Thor exhaled. “Tell me what I must do.”

“Let me tell you a story, of you and me in another life.” His brother stood before him, oh so young, smiling a lethal smile, an unspeakable sadness in those green eyes. 

Thor stared at him for a long moment. No matter what he had expected, it wasn’t this. Sit down and listen to a tale when every nerve and muscle demanded action? When his nerves and muscle and blood were demanding combat?

Loki held his gaze, and at the sight of the sorrow in those young eyes, he remembered what it was like to be boys together. Thor swallowed, angered at his helplessness in the face of sorcery he could never hope to understand. He drew in a deep breath, let it out. “All right.”

“There should be mead, a firepit, a hall full of Asgard’s warriors.” Loki’s voice held a thousand regrets riding on the top of rage. “There are none of those things. There cannot be. It will seem to you as a very vivid dream, as if you were truly experiencing it,” he warned. “Will you let me tell you this tale? Say that you will, and I may proceed.”

“I will,” Thor said stoutly, remembering, despite what little he knew of magic, he knew that the words must be precise.

“Be seated.” Loki had a relieved smile on his face.

Thor looked around then sat on a large flat rock that hadn’t been there before.

Loki stood before him, younger, hair short as one who had only just reached manhood, looking as he had two centuries ago, when first he had joined the company of warriors, fought in his first battle, made his first kill. “In the otherwhere, in the otherwhen, there was a young prince…”


	2. Chapter 2

“What think you of our chances of breaking down their walls before harvest-end?” Thor asked Hogun, studying the smoke-wreathed walled city several hundred feet away from them. Night had fallen, and the bombardment of King Malekith’s stronghold had ceased shortly before sundown, but a heavy haze of dust and smoke lingered in the dying light.

Hogun peered dourly at the seemingly-untouched fortification. “Witchery,” he grunted.

“Aye,” Thor agreed, his hand still wrapped around the hilt of his sword. 

“The Alfar are devil worshippers.” Hogun repeated the words he said nearly every day, glaring at those walls as if his anger alone could tear them down stone by stone.

“All know that,” Thor agreed, as he always did. It was the only explanation for the long Alfar resistance to Asgard’s might.

The siege had been going on forever, and Thor wanted action. He wanted the feel of his sword in his hand, the heft of it as he thrust it through the bodies of his enemies. He wanted blood on its blade. Yet King Malekith’s fortress still held firm against the siege, and rumors were spreading that sorcery alone held their fortification intact. Rumors insisted the Alfar were retrieving needed supplies through treachery or foul magical means, for how else could they have withstood Asgard’s might for so long?

Thor knew better on that count. The spies his father had caught and tortured had revealed that vast storage areas within and beneath Malekith’s castle held enough food for two seasons or more. Direct assaults were useless. The one Tyr had ordered against the city had been met by a deadly rain of arrows from the battlements, causing heavy casualties, with no apparent loss of life on Malekith’s side.

King Odin had ordered a siege, and they’d dug in and had been here for weeks. The catapult had finally arrived, weeks late, while a second, larger one was still mired leagues away, on the wrong side of a washed-out bridge. The unseasonal rains had encouraged even more talk of sorcery, mutterings that still roiled the camp even after the weather improved. 

King Odin demanded his presence, as his eldest son, in his tent near every day while he conferred with Tyr and his other generals on strategy. That was as nearly as dull as the endless days under the blazing sun, broken finally by the arrival of the first catapult. His hopes for quick action had quickly died again when any damage to the crenellated walls was repaired nearly as quickly as it had been made. Whispers of sorcery had multiplied after these failures, but Thor knew what the generals did: this catapult was not powerful enough.

Neither spoke of King Odin’s latest strategy. Spies could be anywhere, and with Alfar magick, there might be ears listening to them even now. The sappers were at work, and so far had not been detected, focused as the Alfar were on the barrage from Asgard’s catapult, now a tactic meant to distract.

The sky darkened, and with that cue, Thor and Hogun and everyone else on the battlefield not guarding the catapult returned to the soldier’s camp. Situated several hundred yards beyond the battlefield proper, its informal boundary was marked by the remnants of the crops that once filled the land leading up to the walled city – crops burned at Odin’s orders, creating a wasteland where once food for the city had grown. This far from the city, the camp looked small and insignificant against the backdrop of towering trees, their dark green leaves beginning to whisper as the near-black branches stirred in an evening breeze. Right here, at the edge of this vast forest, felt very far from home. 

He and Hogun walked through the camp. In the deepening twilight, cooking fires were sprouting up and the smell of roasting meats filled the air. Low voices murmured around them. Nearby was the sound of a weaponsmith repairing a sword. 

Thor’s squire met him at his tent and helped him remove his armor. There was a meal waiting for him, and he invited Hogun in to share it. They communicated in monosyllables while working their way through a pile of meat and bread and a flagon of beer. Once the food was gone, Thor set the flagon down on his table with a bang. “I’ve a mind for gaming.” Hogun grunted and followed Thor outside then offered him a brusque “good evening” and headed in the direction of his own tent. Thor was not surprised. Hogun made a most excellent comrade-in-arms but generally did not care for company of any sort, save that of Thor and a few of Thor’s friends. He did not care for gaming and took no pleasure in the other delights life had to offer. Hogun was curiously prudish about such matters, mayhap because those from his province held to strange customs. 

Thor picked up his pace and strode swiftly through the orderly rows of plain green tents. The soldier’s tents were all placed in specific strategic positions on the grasslands well beyond the reach of the enemy’s archers. He continued past the final row and, filled the anticipation, made his way through the no-man’s land that separated the business of war from the business of those who catered to the warriors.

Here, the campfires were brighter, the voices louder, some cheery from drink, some shouting in anger. 

Here, the gaudy patchwork tents of the camp followers were pitched in no order at all. Here were the gaming tents, the merchants, the suppliers, the alemongers. Here were the sordinn, those slim young men who provided all sexual delights, ready to open their mouths or bend over for coin and other favors. 

He had heard new sordinn had arrived and he was eagerly looking forward to seeing them. He didn’t dare try to explain to anyone else how much he anticipated these evenings or that he felt far more at home with a sordinn than any of the women in the Houses in the city. No, he was always carefully to act like all the other soldiers behaved – that he, like they, found the sordinn enjoyable but a poor substitute for sex with women. But back in the city, visiting the Houses, he found he enjoyed the women best when he thought about these sordinn instead.

There were some among Odin’s men who whispered that it might be wise to bring in women, but that was anathema. Everyone knew it was ill luck to have women anywhere near the battlefield. Battles had been lost when women had strayed too near. It was only the most dimwitted or the most reckless who brought up the long-gone myths of warrior women, and that usually after so much ale and mead that if anyone brought up these old stories it was easy enough to laugh them off, excuse them as a tale told in drunkenness. No, a battlefield and its environs were no place for women, and barely a place for sordinn, popular as they were in the dark hours when their bodies could be used with impunity, and used as well as the subjects of ribald jokes. They were permitted to be here – they had a use here – as long as they stayed in their place and understood they could never have any other status among men. 

Halfway across the intervening space Thor called, “Ho, Fandral!” The blond man, who had almost reached the outskirts of the ramshackle site, turned and grinned at Thor. Fandral was wearing decorative green clothing more suited to court than to a warrior’s camp, while his friends, Volstagg and Bjorn, were in plainer garb. 

“I haven’t seen that outfit before,” Thor commented. “Which of your mistresses sent it to you? Surely not your mother.” 

Volstagg and Bjorn howled with laughter, and Fandral took it in good grace. “I prefer not to dress like common hogs.” Fandral gave their two friends a smug grin, and was slapped hard on the back by Bjorn for his efforts. 

Thor enjoyed their casual camaraderie; he felt comfortable with them. They were the sons of high nobles and had been his companions since childhood, and as such felt free to dispense with court manners and the courtesies owed a prince of the realm. While there was almost always a gloss of deference, it was often barely visible. In their cups, they treated him exactly as they did each other, and it was at moments like these he felt he could truly relax.

Thor headed toward the largest tent first. He didn’t want to appear too eager to visit the sordinn. Best to drink and game for awhile first. A cup of ale was pressed into his hand as soon as he entered the capacious many-poled tent. Everyone bowed respectfully to the King’s son, and he generously rewarded them with coin. He had so much coin it meant little to him and seemed to mean a great deal to them. And no one complained when he won large sums as he then spent his winnings freely, and no one feared his temper if he lost, because he was known to be generous of heart there, as well.

Fandral’s eyes were glittering with drink and with lust, and when Thor stood and declared it was time for other pleasures, he and Bjorn followed eagerly. Volstagg, as always, demurred; he of all of them was married, and newly at that, and he had sworn a solemn vow to his wife not to taste of other pleasures. Unlike many other married men he had, so far, kept to his vow.

Deeper into the encampment, the landscape was dotted with smaller tents. The sordinn posed outside of each, most barely clad, some in fancy dress. All their faces seemed at once mysterious and beautiful, shadowed and seductive in the flickering light from unevenly-spaced torches. 

“I haven’t seen that one before.” Fandral gestured toward a thin young man, coltish, with a fine-boned, sharp-featured face. Like the others, his hair was shorn close to collar-length to denote his status as sordinn, not-man. He was dressed in skintight trousers and a long sleeveless deep-green silky garment with gold stitching around the neckline and hem, tawdry finery that, if seen in daylight, might show carefully patched and repaired places. The deep cut of the garment exposed most of his chest. 

<img src="<https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132651932/>" alt="Illustration # 1/>

Thor looked him up and down. The young man glanced their way out of startling green eyes, then, instantly recognizing Thor, dipped in a deep bow. When he stood again Thor held his gaze, struck by his looks. There was something almost starved looking about him, something strange when glanced out of the corner of his eye, something almost familiar, but when Thor looked at him dead on he seemed like any other sordinn. The only exception was his hair – deepest black and curly. Almost all of the others were blond. Black hair was unusual but no more so than red, and that scarcity commanded a higher price. 

That dark hair made him think of Sif. He felt a pang of loss and almost turned away to seek another, not wanting to think about her. About what had happened to her. But then he looked back again.

Fandral was right – he hadn’t seen this one before either. He studied him curiously, and the sordinn went fluidly from one pose to another, showing off his body. Aside from the black hair, he looked nothing like Sif. It was not uncommon to see new people in the camps. Everyone knew where the pickings were when Asgard was at war, and they were not back in the streets of the capital. New faces arrived, familiar ones departed. Sometimes disease swept the camps and then King Odin sent the entire assemblage away. It mattered nothing. New faces replaced old just as day followed night.

“Ah, Alaric!” Thor glanced back at Fandral who was greeting a blond sordinn with a pleased smile. Alaric favored women’s dress, and today was dressed in a gown of scarlet and gold, slightly ragged at the hem. A bit further away, Bjorn was disappearing inside a tent with his companion for the night, a shorter, equally blond version of the one Fandral had taken by the hand. Fandral paused a second before entering Alaric’s tent. “See anything you like, Thor?”

He followed Thor’s gaze and leered. “I see that you do.” He gave Thor a half-drunken salute, and disappeared inside Alaric’s tent.

Thor turned back to the black-haired man who gave him a smile full of artifice. With a graceful gesture he indicated his tent and waited, eyebrows slightly raised.

Thor paused. The smells and shouts of lust were all around him, the tent walls concealing only the sight of men coupling. Thor was already hard and ridden with desire. There was something about this man he wanted – too much. 

The man slid halfway inside the tent, as boneless and sinuous as a snake, and paused, only his head and one arm still outside. He held out the scarf for Thos to pin to the tent wall to show that it was occupied. Thor took it and slapped a bodkin into place, pinning it to the tent fabric. The sordinn said nothing but his eyes and smile promised everything. Thor followed him inside the squared circle of the tent.

Two small glass-shaded oil lamps, turned down low, cast dual pools of light, leaving most of the tent filled with shadow. A sweet smell permeated the air, some type of incense Thor didn’t recognize. The bed was like all the rest in these tents, a simple frame with a moss-filled mattress. The ale he’d drunk earlier still raced through his veins, and his lust urged him on. Impatient, Thor set his hands on the other man’s shoulders, then hesitated for a split second. On his knees? On his stomach? 

The man gave him a seductive smile and offered one low-throated question, “How do you want me?”

“Clothes off. On the bed, ass up.” Thor watched, mesmerized, as the young man stripped off his garments in quick, fluid movements, managing, despite his speed, to taunt and tease with the flick of a fine-boned wrist, an artful turn of head and shoulder. The young man’s sex was dormant, but that didn’t matter to Thor. Frustrated battle lust needed an outlet, and barely had the man positioned himself when Thor was upon him, quickly parting the pale buttocks and sliding his cock home into the well-oiled orifice in one smooth motion. Pleasure shot along his nerves as he bent over the willing body, grunting and thrusting in and out in a ferocious mindless drive. All through it the young man beneath him breathed out gasps of pleasure and moaned practiced words. He said the same words of praise all sordinns used, proclaiming their paid lover’s skill and stamina. This one sounded as if he meant every word. Thor barely heard him.

After, Thor pulled up his trousers and fumbled for coin. He brought out a triple amount. The sordinn gave him a questioning look as Thor collapsed on the bed. “I would have you again, shortly,” Thor muttered. “Have you any ale?”

The sordinn did. The light from the lamps shone on alabaster-pale skin as he rolled over and stood in one graceful continuous motion. The man was extraordinarily beautiful, and Thor leaned back to admire the view. A strong, slim, flexible body, from surprisingly broad shoulders to a narrow waist, firm buttocks and long, finely-muscled legs. The lamplight caught crisscrossing lines of scars on his back, some very old, some less so. Thor recognized them as the result of more than one beating with a stick. He didn’t ask. Everyone bore scars. He himself had many, most won in battle.

The sordinn retrieved a bottle and a metal cup from a chest and offered them to Thor. The cup was actually clean, Thor was pleased to note. He filled it, then went with his first impulse and chugged directly from the bottle, handing the cup to the sordinn as he did so.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” Thor observed.

“I am newly arrived.” The sordinn sipped delicately. Thor leaning back against slightly prickly bunched cushions, the better to watch the motion of the other’s throat. Imagining that throat working on his cock made him hard again. He finished off the bottle in one long glug, then dropped it on the carpeted ground. “Suck me.”

The sordinn’s face filled with an expression of manufactured delight and he slid to his knees in front of Thor. Thor spread his knees to allow him easy access and an instant later a very talented mouth and throat were engulfing his cock. The sordinn used tongue and teeth to great effect, hands carefully placed to keep Thor from thrusting too roughly into that skilled mouth. 

Thor spilled quickly. When the sordinn slid his mouth off carefully with a faint wet sound and lowered himself to sit on his heels Thor, coming off the high, refocused his eyes. It had never occurred Thor to doubt that his paid companions enjoyed their work – all knew whores were filled with lust – but there was one instant in the aftermath that he surprised a second’s blank look on his companion’s face, a look that vanished immediately when the green eyes refocused. The sordinn’s lips were shiny and wet, and Thor’s gaze lingered there. 

“You were like a stallion, my lord,” he said, “so powerful, so strong.” The sordinn continued speaking, his pleasant voice conveying words that meant Thor was all he had ever hoped for in life. Thor suddenly heard those familiar words, spoken by many other whores, anew. That hint of their falsity, like the taste of something on the verge of going bad, triggered a sudden rush of anger. The anger rode him and he stood up. The sordinn, still kneeling on the floor, looked up in alarm, made the tiniest aborted move backwards, then held himself still and looked him directly in the eye, waiting for a blow.

The stormy mood passed as quickly as it had arrived. Thor relaxed. “Get up.” The sordinn did, the uneasy look vanishing, replaced by a respectful expression suitable to Thor’s status.

Thor slapped him on the shoulder in the same way he would a fellow warrior. The young man’s eyes widened in surprised understanding of the meaning of that gesture. A smile, wholly unlike the ones he’d shown before, crossed his lips, and Thor suddenly was curious.

“What is your name?”

“Loki, milord,” the other responded.

“Loki,” Thor repeated. The name was common enough among peasants and even palace servants, but one he’d never needed to say before. Now that he had the chance to give the sordinn a closer look, something tugged at his memory. He had the feeling he had seen this man before – no, not quite this man. Younger. A half grown boy? A face in the crowd? He struggled with the memory, but it eluded him. 

“Have I seen you before?”

Loki, surprised, took a second to respond. “I don’t believe so, my lord. Perhaps when you were out on procession? I saw you on your stallion, nigh unto five years ago. You looked magnificent in your red cape and fur collar.”

“That must be it.” Dismissing the thought, he found his purse and pulled out more coin. “I would stay a while longer,” he said.

Loki made the coins disappear so quickly Thor remembered that sleight-of-hand was a good talent for the thieving profession and reminded himself to check the rest of his coin before he left. Loki was watching him with a carefully calibrated expression of courtesy, respect, and willingness to serve. 

Thor settled back on the bed, suddenly drained from the day. The light from one of the lamps was beginning to gutter, and Loki said, “Shall I extinguish it?”

Thor nodded and Loki did so. The tent went darker, with only the light from the remaining lamp to illuminate the small space. Thor felt sleepy. The room was still heavy with the scent from the incense. He dozed, but sexual dreams filled his mind and when he awoke, he was truly aroused again. This time, though, he took it slow, running his hands along Loki’s warm sides, warm ass, gently parting his cheeks. and when he bent over Loki’s back, he kissed his way along Loki’s spine as if he were a lover. He wouldn’t spill quickly again, not this night, battle fever burned out of him, and now he could savor Loki’s skill, the way the other man’s body met his, the skilled way Loki’s body squeezed his cock when he was fully seated, wringing every bit of pleasure from him. 

Though Loki was moaning out the usual words of encouragement, they fell more softly, more believably on Thor’s ears, and when he spilled and withdrew from Loki’s body, he clasped him to his body for a moment in thanks for the utter peace he now felt.

When Thor left in the early morning, Loki gave him a proper bow and a slightly-crooked smile. Thor stepped out into the crisp night air and headed back to camp. The night’s stars began fading. Who needed sleep? He had slept enough, in between bouts of sex. He smiled, satisfied at the memory. Loki was beautiful, and very skilled. Thor was glad he had chosen him. He knew he would do so again. That nagging feeling came back to him – had he seen him before? It seemed like he had, but Thor thought he’d clearly remember a face like that. 

He forgot about it as he walked into the camp. Another long, frustrating day lay ahead, full of taunts from Malekith’s soldiers shouted down from their ramparts. Another long day, waiting for the Asgardian sappers to finally complete their task. Then, the castle walls could be broken, the fortress swarmed, and the enemy slaughtered. He wanted to get on with the fighting. 

He strode into his tent. A huge breakfast lay ready on a table, and his esquire was there, ready to dress him for the day. He groaned at the sight of the ceremonial armor. He understood that message very well: another useless day spent in father’s tent, listening to Malekith’s snake-tongued advisors parley with Odin, saying many things and accomplishing nothing.

For now – he thought of Loki’s face and body and smiled. At least now he had something to look forward to.


	3. Chapter 3

Thor arrived punctually at his father’s tent, every bit of his ceremonial armor polished to a shine, his royal red cape settled majestically around his shoulders. Chief General Tyr was already there, as were the masters of the van, the mid, and the rear guard. Tyr and Odin were bent over a map, adding notes, the other three standing close. 

Odin didn’t spare Thor a glance or a grunt of acknowledgment, but continued to speak with Tyr and the other generals in low tones. The brief words they exchanged implied entire sentences, entire thoughts. Thor understood the code well enough, the way one word could indicate an entire action. He _had_ paid attention to his war tutors, if little else. Military matters were the most important of all; he’d always left other fields of study to those who enjoyed that sort of thing. 

Like his brother.

Odin straightened. As always, when he first looked toward Thor his gaze veered slightly, ever-so-briefly, to Thor’s right, seeking someone who was not there, before looking directly at Thor. Thor managed to keep his face perfectly composed; a feat he achieved by running the coded conversation he had just heard through his mind and doing his best to ignore the worm of pointless envy chewing his insides. 

He would never be the man his father’s gaze sought. Brave Baldr. Bold Baldr. Baldr, the master of war and diplomacy alike. Baldr, the best in everything, the scholar, the warrior, the future king. Baldr, now perfect forever, since he was dead.

It had been ever thus since Baldr had died – that one-eyed gaze finding only his second son – now his only son – and finding him wanting.

Odin gestured him over to the map and had Tyr point out the latest intelligence his scouts had discovered. The scouts that had survived the river’s current and the thicket of arrows loosed on them by the Alfar from the heights of their fortress. They’d brought some new crumbs of information on the state of Malekith’s fortified western wall. The news wasn’t good – no chinks or vulnerabilities. 

Odin gestured again, and the Keeper of the Maps carefully packed the map into a flat chest. 

Malekith’s diplomats arrived. The two generals left but Tyr remained. The hours that followed were just as infuriating as Thor had anticipated, the long hours sourly spiced by Malekith’s silver-tongued advisor Furion and his coterie showing up yet again with a flag of truce and a request to parley. They spent all of the long afternoon drinking the King’s fine Asgardian wine and eating the best of their foods and speaking many many many words, all of which the All-Father’s diplomats countered. All the Alfar showed that they were masters of the polite, condescending smile, as were Odin’s diplomats, while Tyr stood like a stone statue and Thor shifted restlessly. Odin, seated on his ornate chair, interrupted only toward the end, but when he did his words fell with the weight of lead. He found the terms unacceptable. He found the demands dishonorable. He made a counter offer and recommended they return and present Asgard’s terms for Alfheim’s surrender. 

The day ended with the diplomats smiling at each other, their hands itching for their knives. When the Alfar left at dusk absolutely nothing had been accomplished. 

Ready to smash heads and needing to blow off steam, Thor still remembered himself enough to wish his father a respectful evening farewell. He grabbed the quick meal waiting for him in his tent, then went straight for the encampment. He didn’t bother to wait for Fandral or Bjorn, but went right past the gaming tents directly to Loki’s tent. Loki, standing outside, widened his eyes at Thor’s expression and, if Thor had been of any mind to notice, he would have seen the brief expression of caution on Loki’s face. Loki pulled the tent flap wide and backed away from him. Thor didn’t give him the chance to quickly strip, simply threw too much coin on the small table before grabbing him, shoving his breeches down, positioning him, and fucking him into the mattress. Red fire in his brain, lust, anger, and thwarted war-lust drove him on, unheeding of the way his hands gripped too tightly, leaving marks on Loki’s pale skin.

After, Thor stretched out flat and stared at the tent’s roof, not thinking about much of anything. He accepted Loki’s bringing cloth and water, accepted his service as he cleaned Thor and then himself. Both lamps burned brightly and in their light he could see the marks his hands had left on Loki’s skin.

He had every right to treat the sordinn any way he wanted, Thor knew. But he felt a sudden sharp stab of regret. He swallowed, repressing the uncomfortable feeling. He had every right, as the king’s son, to do what he pleased to those lesser. To those of no value to his father, he amended.

He sat, reached up, gently touched one of the marks, not missing the quick inhalation of breath, the sense of skin crawling away from his touch. He looked up. Loki’s face was downturned, his head bowed low, as was proper before one of Thor’s rank. He withdrew his touch. “I will not do that to you again,” he said and waited.

“It is nothing, your highness,” Loki spoke in a low tone, still not looking up. Thor knew he was right; knew that he had left those types of marks before on other companions, paid or not. He didn’t understand why this felt different. It unsettled him. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said.

“You did not hurt me, your highness.” Loki’s voice had all the right emphasis in all the right places, and Thor knew with certainty the other man was lying and did not believe him. 

It was something he had finally learned to understand, as a prince, that most people would lie to him. Even his friends – even lost Sif – had lied to him, and sometimes he took this as his due in respect and fear if not honesty, and sometimes he felt the bars of a cage of isolation closing around him. 

He became aware he could hear muffled sounds from outside the walls of this tent. The tent’s walls cut off the sound of individual voices, but it brought him back to himself. This night was no different from any other, this sordinn no different, save in looks, from any other. He had paid good coin for what he had received, and Loki had given himself willingly and with every apparent eagerness.

Loki was still standing in silent attention, his head still respectfully lowered. That unmoving silence was unsettling, and though he knew that with one word Loki would play any part he desired, he did not know what he wanted.

He wouldn’t come back, he decided. There were other new faces here whose bodies he hadn’t sampled yet. There were others he’d be happy to return to. He turned and strode out without saying another word. He felt the weight of Loki’s gaze watching him, but when he turned for one last look Loki was still standing in front of the lamps, his lips curved in a polite smile.

For that night, and the next and the next, Thor’s dreams were filled with Loki’s gaze, but in the mornings he threw off these thoughts, and if he sparred with more ferocity than usual, as all did to keep up their battle readiness, no one dared to remark upon it. He did not go back to the encampment for the first night or the second, choosing instead to stay up late talking with Tyr and Hogun about strategy and weapons and good memories of the past. When he went back on the third night, he walked right past Loki, waiting in front of his tent, and chose another, a short, sturdy blond. When he had finished and came back out, Loki was still standing outside his tent, waiting, unchosen.

Loki lowered his gaze and bowed his head as Thor approached, exactly as correctly as everyone else Thor strode past. Thor kept his gaze on the path in front of him, and chose not to turn his head when he walked on by. 

He dreamed again of Loki that night and thought about him all the following day. Things were enlivened a bit when Thor joined the westward patrol and they ran across a small contingent of Alfar spies. They were good swordsmen, but too few for the brief battle, and within mere moments Thor and his men had three captive spies and the bodies of twice as many more left behind where they had fallen.

But that very night, driven by a compulsion, an obsession with Loki as strong as a drunkard’s need for drink, he went to Loki’s tent. He didn’t want to feel this need, this possessiveness, and even as he approached the tent, even as he saw Loki, unchosen, waiting outside it he tried to tell himself he would walk right on past.

He didn’t. He shook his head angrily as he turned toward the tent, not wanting these feelings. He broke his word, he used Loki roughly, but no matter how Thor used him, Loki moaned and murmured his greatest pleasure. Thor paid him triple coin, then left as quickly as he had arrived, feeling sickened to the soul, while Loki stood aside. What little he slept that night was filled with disturbing dreams.

He stayed away from the encampment for a full week. The atmosphere in the warrior’s camp had darkened with the long idleness, the endless delays, and even the constant training, within sight of the enemy but out of range of their arrows, became an exercise in futility. The sappers had reached another obstruction blocking the path of their tunnel. More foul sorcery, it was claimed. Some began speculating there were enemies behind their lines, obstructing their work, casting spells of confusion and disarray.

“Thor.” Fandral stuck his head inside Thor’s tent, then brashly stepped inside. 

Thor, caring for his sword, looked up. “I am in no mood to be disturbed, Fandral.”

“Ah, you see, that is why I am here. You are in no mood for your friends, but we are in the mood for you.”

Thor growled, and Fandral spread out his hands, a placating smile on his handsome face. His beard, as always, was meticulously well tended, and Thor ran a hand over the rough untended growth of his own.

“Come to the encampment with us tonight, my prince.” Thor startled at the title, and to the note of caution in Fandral’s voice. It took guts for Fandral to come here, to poke the bear in its cave, Thor realized. “You need a change of scene,” Fandral wheedled. “They have a new shipment of ale from the finest brewery in the province and two new sordinns have arrived from the city. One has red hair!” 

Still riding an edge of anger and frustration, but restless and needing to move, he set the sword aside. He clapped his hand on Fandral’s shoulder. “I would not think to stand between you and one with red hair. Let’s go.”

The ale was good. Better, even, than that served in father Odin’s tent, as it had a rougher, less finished edge which suited his mood. Thor emptied his cup, cast his dice, and roared with pleasure when his die skittered across the gaming board and landed on the winning square. Bjorn, already well in his cups, smacked Thor across the back and told a bawdy joke about a highborn lady and a tinker. Thor returned the favor with a harder smack and an even bawdier tale about a dandy bespelled to fall in love with a goat. Still laughing, he followed them from one gaming and drinking tent to another, but sometime after midnight Fandral tired of gaming and led them to the zigzagging alley where the sordinn’s tents were pitched. 

There was a scarf pinned to Loki’s tent door. Rage burned through Thor’s body. Some other warrior was inside the tent having what was his. He strode toward the tent, reaching for his short sword. 

Fandral grabbed his arm, and for an instant Thor, enraged, turned on him, ready to strike.

Fandral’s eyes filled with fear and shock and Thor froze in place, still ready to strike, still half-mad with anger. “My prince!” Bjorn gasped from behind him and, heart hammering, Thor lowered his sword. Twisting his head, he glared at the tent, fighting off the urge to tear it down and cut the usurper inside to pieces. 

Another few breaths, and he was able to look at his friends again. He lowered his head for a moment, as an unaccustomed surge of shame cut through him, and then, angry at that weakness, he caught a breath, straightened his shoulders, and looked up. 

“My prince,” Fandral said carefully, and his repeated use of the title brought home to Thor that he had threatened his best and closest friend over what? A sordinn? “Of course you can have whoever you like. Just let me go in, take whoever is within out, out of your sight – ”

Just then he heard scuffling and, hand back on sword, turned quickly to the tent. Barely visible in the darkness, a naked man shoved his way underneath one wall, dislodging one of the tent poles. The figure got to his feet and ran without looking back, clearly aware of their shouted conversation. Naked buttocks flashed as the man ran off into the darkness at far edge of the encampment.

Thor roared with laughter and turned back to his friend. “Good Fandral,” he said at last. “I know not what overcame me.” Why was he so possessive of this one? A sordinn was a sordinn. 

“Thor.” Fandral gestured to the tent. “You can still have him,” he said gently, persuasively. 

But Thor shook his head. Something still clenched his gut and demanded possession of the man inside the tent. He was the King’s son. He could have whoever he wanted. But this was a weakness, this sort of attachment, and he was stronger than that. 

“No,” he said. “He’s just another flower in the field. There are so many others to pick.” He gestured down the alley, and sure enough, at least half of the sordinn were standing outside their tents, beckoning smiles wreathing their faces, their bodies posed in provocative alluring stances. All of them were eager to snare the King’s son, if only for one night. 

Fandral gave a relieved laugh. Thor gave Loki’s tent one last angry look and strode down the alley. Fandral trotted to catch up and laid his hand on Thor’s arm again. He gestured further down the alley, where another slender dark-haired man posed beside his tent. Thor shook Fandral’s hand off again. Fandral gave him an odd look, and that irritated Thor. He could shout at Fandral; he was still the King’s son, Fandral his future subject. 

Thor turned away instead. There was an available blond close by and Thor headed in his direction. The man’s expression brightened when Thor caught his gaze, clearly pleased he’d won Thor’s favor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fandral heading toward a tall red-head.

The next time Thor came to the encampment he did not glance in the direction of Loki’s tent. He chose the first sordinn he saw, shorter than he by a head, with red-gold hair and cleanshaven face, like all these others. He rode him hard and went back to his own tent early, physically sated, troubled in mind. He dreamed of Loki and woke up hard and aching.

When next Thor visited the encampment, he found Loki standing outside his tent, in the same pose as the others chose, boldly advertising. His gaze met Thor’s, and a practiced, welcoming smile crossed his mouth – the usual expression of a sordinn’s pleasure at seeing a favored customer, and more, the hunger for the status of being chosen – again – by the King’s son. How many others had had Loki in the past few days, their lust inflamed by the knowledge they were following in the King’s son’s path? That thought angered him and the thought first occurred to him: to pay Loki for his services alone, to keep him exclusive, to permit no others to touch him.

He shoved the thought aside. He would be laughed at, mocked by his friends, lectured by his father. While having a favorite mistress in the city was acceptable, having a favorite sordinn in the encampments, where no woman was ever allowed to be present, was suspect. The thought of facing Odin, of being roared at and shamed for allowing himself to submit to forbidden emotions, cut a cold hard gash inside him, and he forced it away as he tried to force away every feeling he did not understand.

As before, Loki showed him gracefully into the tent. “Your pleasure, your Highness?” he murmured in a low seductive tone, his smile promising the greatest of delights. But when Thor stripped the clothing from him he saw the bruises on his shoulders, his wrists, and his thighs, their dark remnants on his white skin only partially concealed by cosmetic paint.

Loki turned toward the bed and Thor saw worse bruises on his buttocks and thighs. “Who did this to you?” he demanded, turning Loki back to face him.

Loki’s posture stiffened and he cast his eyes down submissively. “Your Highness, I vow, like all others, to speak nothing of those who visit me.” The implicit accusation was, _you know this, you must know this, why do you put me in this position by asking me this question?_

“If I ordered you to answer,” Thor began, gaze still on the marks on his thighs, his wrists and shoulders, then stopped abruptly at the look of alarm in Loki’s eyes. “I don’t want to see this again. You may speak of this to any you like. I give my royal permission.”

Loki inclined his head, nearly a bow, acknowledging what was not explicitly stated: The order to tell this to the client who had done this to him. 

The sudden desire to reclaim those buttocks, those thighs, filled him with an equally sudden disgust. Instead, he ran a gentle hand along the injured flesh. 

“It is nothing,” Loki said. “It will heal soon.”

Thor said nothing. He’d seen this before, of course he had. Many warriors abused their paid and unpaid lovers and wives alike. Why did it suddenly rise in him, this urge to question custom?

Had he not himself left marks on Loki’s body?

_Nothing like this_ , he tried to assure himself. _Nothing at all like this._

He didn’t like the unpleasant feeling of shame this thought gave him, and clenched his fists. Loki was still watching him, cautiously, expectantly, but Thor found desire had fled. He handed Loki more than enough coin for an entire night. “Leave the scarf on the tent all night,” he said, and slipped outside and quickly around the dark side of the tent, to take to the woods, threading his way through the tall dark boles, instinctively quiet, paralleling the military camp. 

He spent some time out in the quiet, listening to the rustling sounds of night birds and animals, the soft sound of a breeze blowing through the leaves of the trees. Fall was coming soon. Would the siege itself end soon? When that happened and the city was taken, they would all return home, triumphant, laden with spoils. They would all return to their lives, revert to custom, where back inside the walls of the city this life would be left behind. The sordinn would disappear into whatever lives they had held before, or stay employed in the most noxious parts of town, where it was worth a nobleman’s reputation if caught there. No matter how urgent his desires, there were now women available to slake them, as mistresses, or inside the Houses of women. The desires of the battlefield, and those who slaked them, stayed outside the city walls. Even speaking of them stayed outside the city walls.

He hoped the war would end soon in a glorious battle. A battle in which he could finally prove himself to Father to be Baldr’s equal. He wanted to kill them all, to destroy their city, to do it NOW so he could go back home. Back to where he wasn’t plagued by feelings he didn’t understand.

Back home, he wouldn’t be troubled by his growing need to be with Loki. Back home, if he thought of him at all, he’d remember him as a good fuck and nothing more.

Back home, he would stop thinking of his expressive eyes, his dark hair, his pale skin, the sharp planes of his face, shadowed by the flickering lamplight.

Back home, he might not even recognize him on the street. 

Back home, he would be reminded of Sif, the one who was never spoken of. Of what she had wanted and was told she could not have, and how angry and determined that had made her. 

He had the same feelings himself, but he didn’t understand how to deal with them. He just didn’t understand what he wanted. She was the only one who had ever truly understood him. And she was gone.

Filled with unease over questions that had no answers, he kept walking, trying to burn off energy. Night birds were calling, but everything else was silent. It was strange to be alone. He slowed, came to a stop, looked around him. The towering trees were dark shadows in the dimness; the uneven ground was soft with grasses beneath his feet. The air was cool, crisp, forest-scented. Had he ever been this alone before? He couldn’t remember. There were always people around, courtiers and servants and, when not required to be someplace by his father, his friends. 

It was strange, he thought again. He thought of Loki and an odd thought occurred to him. What would it be like to see him here, in the moonlight? Something half-remembered crested in his mind, then vanished again before he could grasp hold of it. He looked up at the slice of the moon high in the heavens, caught for an instant between the topmost branches of the trees and imagined the scene, he and Loki. Here. Alone. Then a cloud obscured the moon, the silver light vanished, and Thor was left in darkness again.


	4. Chapter 4

Late in the morning, some days later, having stayed away from the encampment for that entire period of time, Thor and several friends wandered out with bows and arrows into the woods south of the battlefield hunting for small game. Once again, the sappers had been turned back by a seemingly impenetrable wall of rock, and once again King Malekith had sent parley for terms. Once again Father had turned them away.

Thor and his friends knew that the staged outlooks would send up a sky signal if they needed for them to return. Some distance from the battle site now, he heard the burbling sound of a stream combined with the sound of voices. Thor gestured to the others and headed forward, keeping silence. They followed close behind him, their hands on the short swords they never left behind. 

Moving silently among the thick stand of trees, Thor advanced and his friends followed. The vegetation thinned, and sunlight broke through. Thor held up a hand and they all halted behind him. He could see glimpses of moving figures through the intervening branches, a flash of pale skin - arms, backs and legs. Closer yet, and he saw most of the figures were kneeling by the river, but when some of them straightened he saw most of them were blond.

He relaxed. Whoever they were, these were none of Malekith’s people. He gestured to those behind him – all clear – then walked through the intervening brush out into the sunlight. Startled faces turned to them, all familiar. 

The sordinn from the camps, doing their laundry on river stones. Familiar faces, but startlingly different in the sunlight, away from the smoke and darkness of the encampment, the dimness of their tents, the disguises of cosmetics. Somehow they all looked both plainer and fresher in the sunlight, and most of them looked so very young.

Loki’s eyes widened when he saw Thor. He let go of the fragile-appearing garment he was washing. It crumpled onto a flat rock, a splash of gold and green. Loki rose to his full height. In full daylight, Thor was struck by the color of Loki’s eyes. In the dimness of the tent, he’d never seen their true color. Now he saw they were a striking emerald green. 

Those green eyes, combined with the angle of Loki’s head startled Thor into sudden recognition. In full daylight, dressed in plain clothing, wearing no artifice, Loki looked so much younger. After their first meeting Thor had nearly forgotten the strange feeling that he’d met Loki before, but now he understood. He had seen him before. He’d just never been able to pin down where and when. 

He knew now.

They were now all bowing respectfully, to him, and to those men accompanying him, no trace of seduction or sexuality present, chased away by the remnants of their fear that they’d been caught out in the woods by an enemy.

Thor held Loki’s gaze a moment longer, giving him a slight smile. Loki’s shoulders relaxed, tension releasing, and he took in and let out a deep breath. “Carry on,” Thor said, before turning back to his friends. “Let’s go further east, see what we can find there.”

They all stepped back into the green darkness of the forest, but Thor stayed very aware of the young man standing by the riverside behind him, following him with his gaze.

That day when Thor visited the encampment, he came early and alone. His fingers traced the edges and contours of the item he had brought, wondering yet why he was considering even doing this, knowing it was making a statement, yet unsure of what he intended to imply.

He shook off the conflict. Staying away from the camp for several days, then seeing Loki in the sunlight yesterday, recognizing him, had clarified some of his thoughts. He was the King’s son; he _would_ do what he liked in these matters at least, tradition be damned. When he was King he’d change anything he liked.

It was early twilight when he arrived. The evening fires remained unlit. Loki was sitting on a short stool in front of his tent, concentrating on sewing up a rent in one of his garments. Thor didn’t think he’d made any sound at all – walking soundlessly when stealth was necessary was a skill ingrained in him from his earliest warrior’s training, and even now, off the battlefield, he instinctively followed his training. Loki’s gaze, however, sharp and quick as a raven’s, caught Thor as soon as he emerged from the winding path across the no man’s land separating the warrior’s tents from the camp followers’ area. Thor headed over to him in casual, easy strides, and stopped a few feet away. They watched each other in silence for a moment. 

Thor studied Loki’s face in this new light. The sun was touching the horizon, the colors of sunset showing Loki’s face in yet another light. Full dark, high noon, and now sunset. What would Loki look like in early morning, stepping out into the cool air of dawn? He wanted to know.

“I wondered why you were so familiar.” Loki tensed. Thor knew why, but he wasn’t going to bring up the rumors of Loki’s parentage. “I remember you now. You are the woodcutter’s son; he brought you with him to the gates of the palace with deliveries.” Thor remembered looking down from the battlements at the slight black-haired child with the emerald eyes, burdened with stacks of wood. Remembered a boy of almost his own age looking up at him, curly black hair carelessly chopped off at the base of his neck. That black hair, still curly, was now cropped closer to Loki’s skull. 

Loki looked surprised. He seemed marginally less tense, but he still sat there, silent, waiting.

“You always have my permission to speak.”

A look of skepticism raced across Loki’s face. “I wouldn’t have thought you would even have seen me. Why would you remember a peasant’s son? Why should you remember _me_? You are the great king’s son and I…” his voice trailed off, but his gaze held a distant sense of reproof. “I am Laufeyson.” He waited a moment and when Thor said nothing, said defiantly, “Or so they say. I know what else they say.” 

So he wasn’t going to hide or evade the issue. Thor remembered the rumors, the nasty words. Bastard. Changeling child. He didn’t say them. It was whispered that this child was not Laufey’s true son, and, though some said his wife had had congress with another man, some said even darker things, that she was a faerie wife, others said he was a changeling left by the fae. “People say a lot of things. Most of it means nothing.”

Loki waited a minute and, when Thor said nothing else, he relaxed. 

Thor remembered his fantasies of adventures in the woods, with a friend to who could show him the mysteries of the forest. A friend he could explore with, escaping the confines of the palace and every strict routine of training and court manners. How he had thought often about this nameless boy’s beautiful face, expressive eyes, and that dark curly hair. He’d wondered what it would be like, to touch that face, that hair. He’d visualized them alone in a meadow in the forest where no one could see them, where he could truly be free. 

Freedom. He looked at the child he’d seen, now a man grown, selling his body to warriors, and understood the confines of Loki’s life.

“I used to imagine what it would be like to have a friend I could truly be free with,” he admitted.

“Your Highness,” Loki said, dipping his head. He held the entry curtain open. “You may feel free with me.”

His tone was light, suggestive, as was his smile, but Thor could taste the bitter undercurrent to that statement. He entered the tent. Loki pinned the scarf to the outside tent wall, then followed.

Once the tent flap was fully closed, Thor reached out and touched, then caressed Loki’s curly black hair, truly discovering the feel and texture for the first time. Loki stood there, absolutely still, eyes downcast.

“Don’t be afraid of me.”

Loki’s chin lifted. “No, Your Highness.”

“Call me Thor.”

“Where no one else can hear,” Loki agreed, a trace of caution lingering in his tone. “Thor.”

Thor reached into his pocket. Loki’s expression showed clearly he was expecting the usual payment, and he was not disappointed. “For all night,” Thor said, and Loki accepted the payment without comment. 

“And,” Thor reached back into his pocket and brought out his gift. He extended his hand to Loki, opened his fingers. Loki stared down at the item in his palm, barely daring to breathe, not moving until he lifted his gaze questioningly to Thor.

“That – is entirely too much,” Loki breathed.

“Take it, as my gift to you.”

Loki hesitatingly touched one fingertip to the heavy gold dragon brooch. It was for a nobleman’s cloak, entirely too extravagant to give to a sordinn, and yet Thor didn’t care. He wanted to do this.

“You know we cannot…” Loki faltered at the implications of such a gift. He looked up at Thor and there was a wet sheen in his eyes. “Your Highness, I don’t know what you want of me.”

“I don’t know either,” Thor admitted. “But I want you to have this.”

“If anyone sees it, they will think me a thief.” He was no longer trying to hide his fear.

“I will make it clear you haven’t stolen it,” he added, disturbed by fear on Loki’s face.

“You – do yourself no favors, my lord.” Loki looked down.

Thor knew it. He felt wild, reckless, aching to break free of the walls of custom and position. He felt as he had when he had first seen Loki, imagining himself running free in the forest. “Keep it a secret, then,” he suggested. “Something for your future, when the war is over.” Feeling an unaccustomed feeling of helplessness at the uncertainty on Loki’s face, he was confused for a moment, then realized, “It would be hard for you to sell, or to keep, would it not?”

“Yes, my lord.” Loki kept his gaze down.

For all that he was a King’s son, he had never felt the bonds of custom around him as tightly as they were now. Thor let out a grunt of frustration. “I would like for you to keep it.”

“As you wish, my lord,” Loki said in a flat tone.

Thor tipped Loki’s face up with his palm and looked into tear-bright eyes.

“All right,” he said, frustrated, wanting to struggle against those bonds, but seeing no way out. Money was fine. Gifts were suspect – particularly something as extravagant as this – as they implied an emotional bond. He knew that. But he railed against it. The rules shouldn’t apply to him.

But they did.

Loki opened his fingers. Held out his hand. Thor took back the brooch and shoved it inside a pocket in his cloak. “I will give you all the money you will ever need,” he swore.

Loki blinked, inhaled a breath that was part a sob, looked back directly at Thor. His face was as free of artifice as it had ever been, even more so than the startled look he had given Thor at the stream. He looked shocked, then delighted, then frightened.

Thor reached out, took Loki by the shoulders. The green fabric of the tunic – the same one he had been washing at the stream – bunched slightly, breaking the smooth pattern of embroidered gold leaves. Thor drew him close, embraced him, felt his arms around Loki’s body, his solid self, feeling him breathe, feeling the whisper of Loki’s breath against his skin, feeling a living person, one he’d seen many times from the ramparts and never spoken to; one he’d watched disappearing back into the streets and imagined out in the living woods, wild and free.

He looked into Loki’s face, the cosmetics on his eyelids, and tilted his face up. Bent slightly and kissed Loki’s mouth. Loki’s eyes went wide, and then his mouth opened as he accepted Thor’s kiss. He wound his arms around Thor’s broad back, arms strong from years of wood-cutting and wood-hauling, and Thor suddenly realized if Loki had been born to a different father, a noble father, he might well have made a fine warrior.

Thor kept his touch light as he slowly undid the ties that held the topmost part of Loki’s tunic together. He ran his hands down Loki’s cloth-covered sides. Loki’s eyes were full of questions, but he acquiesced, standing passive beneath Thor’s gentle touch. Thor hooked his fingertips under the garment’s hem, pulled up. As he lifted the garment Loki raised his arms in response to his unspoken request. The garment bunched beneath Loki’s armpits and Thor reached out to tug first the right sleeve, then the left, before lifting the garment over Loki’s head. He dropped it to the floor. “I will give you more of these.” His voice was a low, lustful whisper. Loki squeezed his eyes shut at another impossible promise. Thor swept his gaze down Loki’s chest. Hairless, smooth, pale as a statue in the dim lamplight. Thor gazed at the revealed flesh hungrily. “Many more.” He’d never stopped to really look at Loki, had seen mostly the pale back beneath him, marked by the lighter lines of scars, the pale buttocks he was driving his cock into. The dark hair, seen from above, as that talented mouth took him in; the sight of his own hands clutching that head. He wondered what it would be like to do what Loki did, to take another man’s cock in his mouth. Forbidden to him; he knew the rules. He could take. He could not give. He swallowed saliva, his hunger to give near overcoming him.

Loki’s eyes widened, large, startled, as Thor bent toward him, as Thor’s lips touched his. He didn’t pull back but opened his mouth, a practiced move that suddenly made Thor want something _more_. Something genuine. Something real. With weapon-hardened hands more used to violence than gentleness, he caressed Loki’s back, his calloused hands snagging against the rough lines of scars marring the otherwise smooth skin. 

He kept his touch gentle even as he began exploring Loki’s mouth with his tongue. Loki cooperated, every move correct, practiced. His eyes closed, and he moaned appreciatively. Still, Thor understood Loki was playing an expected part. He let go, pulled back, and sat down on the low mattress. “Kneel,” he said.

Loki did so, as gracefully as he did everything else, and Thor saw by the look of relief on his face he knew exactly what his role was to be now. But he started again when Thor spread his knees wide, pulled Loki closer to his body, and sucked one of Loki’s nipples. The feel of the nub beneath his tongue, hardening at the touch, inflamed him. Loki sucked in a breath, and the sound of that too fed Thor’s desire. Loki’s hands fell to his sides. He didn’t look up to see the expression on Loki’s face, his vision entirely on the alabaster-white skin in front of his face. He concentrated on tracing small circles around the nipple, and then, with small nip-kisses, his mouth travelled to the other side of Loki’s chest. That nipple was already hard, expectant, and the sound of Loki’s gasp when Thor closed his teeth on the hard nub, giving it a gentle bite, went straight to Thor’s cock.

He pulled back slightly and looked up. Loki was blinking, startled, but focused his gaze quickly on Thor’s own. 

“Give me the oil,” Thor said, and Loki swiftly obeyed, the small jar close to hand and ready to use. His expression had changed again, still confused, because it was his job to use the oil, to prepare himself, but when Thor poured the oil into the palm of one hand and used it on his own cock Loki’s expression changed back to one of relief, one who knows his way back to a known pathway, one who knows what is expected of him. One no longer lost. 

Then Loki’s expression changed again as Thor re-oiled his palm, reached out, and took Loki’s cock into a gentle grasp. Loki was partially erect, and Thor held his hand there. He concentrated on the feel of another man’s flesh in his hand, knowing exactly what to do and how to do it. He began with a slow glide back and forth, teasing at the foreskin. Loki shuddered, a full body shiver, and the moan that escaped his lips was ragged, not practiced. Thor looked up to see Loki’s eyelids fluttering with unfeigned pleasure. 

Loki realized Thor was looking at him, and a look of uncertainty verging on fear tinged his expression. Then Thor tightened his grip, pulled along Loki’s length, used his thumb to circle the tip. Loki’s cock hardened in his hand and when he looked up again Loki was biting his lip, his eyes half closed, his gaze unfocused. Loki’s hand reached out, ready to grasp Thor’s cock, but Thor, despite the keen need of his desire, pushed Loki’s hand away. Loki’s eyes snapped open. 

“Loki,” Thor breathed as if speaking an endearment, “this is for you.” He kept moving his hand, varying his touch, the pressure, the speed, all the while staring into Loki’s eyes. Loki held his gaze for a long moment but as Thor continued what he was doing, he let out a long shuddering sigh of pleasure, his eyelids slipping shut. 

Thor kept doing everything he liked, everything he knew felt good. The harder Loki got, the harder Thor got, until it was all he could do to concentrate on what he was doing and not on what his body was demanding.

Moments stretched out to eternity. Loki had begun to thrust, and was making small, bitten off sounds, nothing at all like the practiced moans and cries he made when Thor was fucking him, sounds now more than obvious in their falseness. Small rivulets of sweat trickled down Loki’s torso. Thor wanted to lick them, but couldn’t from this angle. Thor couldn’t resist any longer – the slide of hot hard flesh in his right hand inspiring him to grab his own cock with his left. Scant minutes later, Loki made a guttural cry and grabbed Thor’s shoulders, pumping his hips. Thor’s hands moved faster, a slick blur, and Loki squeezed Thor’s shoulders in an iron grip, grunted, panted, and came, spurting in the air between them. 

Thor let go of Loki’s cock, grabbed at his own cock with his right hand, letting go with his left. A few seconds of frantic motion later and he came, hard and hot, spilling onto the carpet.

Loki sagged, then suddenly straightened and snatched his hands off Thor’s shoulders. His gaze focused and he looked at Thor with bewilderment. “Why, Lord?” he managed in a broken voice.

“Because I wanted to,” he said simply. There was no way he could put into words what he felt, how Loki suddenly seemed so different to him, how he had wanted to give him something, do something for him. He didn’t try.

Loki was looking at him with wide eyes and Thor moved to gently kiss his mouth. Loki accepted the kiss, returned it with equal softness. Thor smiled, and felt the move of Loki’s lips as he smiled as well. Grinning now, Thor lay down on Loki’s bed, moved to the far side, and patted the empty space next to him. Loki settled down beside him, lying on his side as the bed was not large enough for both of them to lie flat. Loki’s gaze had grown shuttered again, but he relaxed and his eyelids slid shut. 

Thor thought at first of the strangeness of having someone sleep next to him, like common soldiers in an inn. It was odd and strange and somehow comforting. He drifted off to sleep, rousing when raucous sounds outside showed the night life of the encampment was in full swing. He turned his head and found Loki looking at him. The lamps were burning low, Loki’s face was mostly in shadow, but there was still a reflective glint in Loki’s eyes. 

“What are you thinking?” Thor asked.

Loki became very still. Then, his voice almost flat, he said, “That I am fortunate to have gained your favor.” 

Thor had heard that phrase before, many times, but Loki’s tone held none of the obsequious pandering he usually heard in those ritual words. 

Nor did it hold much of any tone that Thor could interpret.

Thor decided not to think about it. He patted Loki’s shoulder and sat up. “Take some coin. Go buy us some food. I didn’t bother to eat before I came here.”

A fleeting expression crossed Loki’s face. Again, surprise, and now curiosity. He rose without saying a word, quickly put his clothing back on, grabbed a coin that had fallen on the carpeted ground, and slipped outside the tent.

_What was he doing?_ The thought should have disturbed Thor, but it did not. He was the King’s son, he reminded himself; he could do as he pleased. No one would know that he had chosen to pleasure a sordinn; it was only with his hands; that was not forbidden, and some said it increased their pleasure to have a sordinn come while they were fucking him. Thor decided he would try that next. 

Loki was back a short time later, with meat and bread and ale. Thor, ravenous, quickly ate and drank most of it, though he surprised both Loki and himself by breaking off pieces of bread and handing him slices of meat rather than having him wait until Thor finished his meal. He was kind of a servant, after all, and Thor supposed he shouldn’t have eaten until after Thor finished, but found he didn’t care. Customs were just that, and he didn’t know why he should care. 

_Lady Sif hadn’t cared about customs, and look what happened to her._

_Sif was not a child of a King, and a woman besides._

He poured more ale down his throat. He didn’t want to think about Sif. These memories made him remember feelings he’d rather forget.

After their meal was over, and Thor had drunk his fill of the ale, he caught Loki in his arms, kissed him, bent to his ear and said, “I would have you now.”

Loki got the oil again, prepared himself, and this time when Thor slid home and began to rut, he remembered to reach beneath Loki’s body, grabbed his cock, and pleasured him. Loki gasped and keened with pleasure, and it made it all the better for Thor, knowing Loki’s pleasure was real.

It was quite true, he thought later, coming down from the high, that having Loki spend while Thor was inside his body had made the experience even more pleasurable. 

_Why was Loki so different?_

_Why was he even thinking these difficult thoughts?_

He didn’t know. He kissed Loki’s mouth and Loki kissed eagerly back. Loki wound one arm over him, and they both fell into sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

“We missed you, last night,” Fandral said, concern and caution in his voice. “You left ahead of us. Early.”

Thor looked up from where he was examining the marks of the passage of what he believed to be a large boar, fit for hunting. Fandral was leaning casually against a tree, but his tone was careful and his eyes were questioning.

Thor grunted nothing in particular. He didn’t have to answer anyone’s questions, even those of a friend. He answered to no one but his father, and Fandral should know that. Thor turned his attention back to the scrape along the side of tree, clearly a tusk mark. The interior flesh of the tree showed like a wound through the dark rough bark.

“Fresh,” he commented. “He can’t be far ahead.” He paused to listen. Just ordinary sounds – the rustle of leaves and small animals, a cry of a bird. “We should be quiet,” he said, giving Fandral a hard look.

Just then Volstagg and Hogun and the rest of the hunting party emerged from the surrounding trees. Thor jerked a thumb to the mark on the tree. They nodded and waited for his cue.

He turned his attention back to Fandral who gave the tiniest of shrugs and moved silently forward. Thor jerked his head in a northeast direction and the hunting party set off.

Loki had food already in his tent when Thor arrived. Thor had swum out into the river after the kill, washing off the blood and stink of the hunt, and dressed in a fresh tunic. Now he sat down on the floor and eagerly consumed the meal Loki had ready for him.

It was still daylight outside the tent. Thor had come here immediately after returning from the hunt, once again not waiting for the evening meal, eager as he was to see Loki again.

Thor bit the last fragment of meat off a bone and tossed it aside. He settled his back against the low bed and studied Loki, who was sitting cross-legged opposite him finishing his own meal. He liked just looking at Loki, he realized. The line of his jaw. The midnight hair, like a raven’s wing. The sharp-boned face, beautiful in a way Thor had never considered beauty before. 

Loki looked up and smiled when he saw Thor studying him. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you,” Thor said. 

“I still can’t believe you remembered me.” Loki set his meal aside, wiped his hands on a rag, and stretched as fluidly as a cat.

“You made me think.” Thor smiled at Loki’s quizzical expression. “When I watched you from the ramparts, and saw you leaving with your father, I began thinking things that I’d never thought before.”

“About what?” Now Loki was puzzled. He tilted his head to one side, like an inquisitive bird.

“About what I couldn’t have.” Thor said the words in a low tone, though there was no one else to hear them.

“You have everything.” Loki appeared thunderstruck. “What could I – any of us – possibly have that you could not ask of your father or ask of any of your subjects on your own?”

Thor considered his words. He was used to talking about things he was familiar with. But these were new thoughts and he needed new words. He needed to best figure out how to put them together. “There I was, behind walls, always surrounded by my father’s men,” he began. Loki leaned forward, intent. “I was never able to go out on my own. Whenever I saw you, I imagined you in the forest, free to explore, to go and do as you pleased.”

Loki barked a startled, cynical laugh and settled back. “It wasn’t like that. It was a lot of hard work.” He held out his hands. “Soft creams and scrubbing stones made my hands soft, uncallused, but I will be older soon, no longer comely, and must go back to chopping and carrying wood. These hands will bear those marks again, soon enough. And then there will be no end to it.”

Thor paused at the harsher tone in Loki’s voice. It reminded him of the approach of winter, a reminder of harder times to come, the sudden chill of an approaching blizzard. “Why do this now?”

“Why do you think?” Loki sighed, then gave him a crooked smile. There was nothing of the seducer in his posture now. “I make much coin this way – more than chopping and carrying wood ever could. It will help, in the time to come. My father is old and can no longer do the work.”

Loki’s voice had gone flat when he spoke of his father. Thor considered that. More questions were occurring to him. “Why did you stop helping your father? You stopped coming with him – he had another boy with him. I watched for you – ” He swallowed, remembering that he had kept watching for weeks for the boy to return with the woodcutter. He’d yearned to catch one more glimpse of his face, filled with a type of fear he couldn’t explain, not to himself, and certainly not to anyone else. But the boy had never come back and eventually he had stopped looking. “ – it was if you had disappeared.” 

“My father needed me for woodcutting when I was old enough,” Loki said matter-of-factly. 

“Was the new boy your brother?” Loki shook his head. Thor wasn’t surprised. The new boy hadn’t looked anything like either Loki or his father.

“No. I was the youngest. He took on a neighbor boy to help with the deliveries.”

“Do you have any brothers to help?” 

“No. Not now.” Loki sighed, and rubbed his hands together. “I did, then. They did most of the work. They were older than me, bigger, stronger. There were,” he gulped. His voice shook slightly when he went on. “Terrible accidents. Helblindi when I was much younger. Byielstr, last year.” His face darkened, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them again they were focused on something far beyond the confines of the tent. “The tree was cut wrong. Helblindi stepped into its way – it shouldn’t have fallen. Not that direction. It fell on him. Byielstr – the axe-head – he – so much blood – ” He swallowed, looked down at his hands and said nothing more. 

Thor nodded in understanding, and something inside him twisted at the sound of Loki’s grief. The vivid description made him think about a horrible accident he’d seen in the palace yards last year. The man had bled out. 

Terrible things happened. People died every day. His brother –

His brother had been felled in battle by dishonorable enemies. A poisoned arrow, everyone said. Everyone knew those from Nidavellir had no honor. The arrow had struck Baldr in the arm, a mere graze. But the wound had mortified, and though they took off his sword arm in an attempt to save his life, he had died. 

He didn’t want to talk about Baldr. How could he even talk about his big brother, who he’d followed everywhere when he’d been a little child, and loved and hated with every bit of his heart? The brother his father looked at and praised, then looked at him and found him wanting? He opened his mouth anyway. “I lost a brother too,” he said.

“Prince Baldr, yes. All mourned his loss.” Loki’s expression had changed to one of complete sympathy.

“He was perfect,” Thor said, angry memories flooding his mind. “Everyone loved him. Everyone remembers him.” Each word tasted of bitterness and envy. “The perfect warrior, the perfect scholar.”

Loki was looking at him with surprise. Thor found he regretted his words – though why, he could not say; they were fine words. It was just his tone that was not so fine. Uncomfortable, he decided to change the subject. “I have a new gift for you. A better gift.”

He rummaged in an inner pocket, and pulled out his gift. Loki watched him as curious and eager as a child waiting for a promised sweet. It was a look of innocence, an expression utterly out of place in these surroundings.

“This, I think, you will keep.” Thor extended his hand, fingers closed.

Without hesitation, Loki held out his hand and Thor dropped a square medal into it.

Loki looked down and his brow furrowed. “Is this…?” He frowned, inspecting it more closely, looking at the images on one side, then the other. He looked up at Thor questioningly.

“It’s a safe passage-seal, a token giving the bearer the ear of my House. You can keep this and, if any ever asks, say that this is the token of the royal house. It will keep you safe in times of trouble.” Thor saw Loki was about to object, added hastily, “Even if they don’t believe you, even if they think you stole it, all the soldiers and city guardians know that any who carry this medal must be given the ear of the palace and no harm must come to them before their presentation to court.”

Loki still looked troubled, but he closed his fingers around it. “Thank you.” Loki’s gaze said he understood the honor. “I will keep it your secret.”

“Unless needed.”

“Of course,” he said. He reached for a pouch and placed it inside and set it down. A thin flat stone slipped out of it as he set it down. It fell to the carpeted ground. Thor glanced at it, but didn’t recognize the mark. “What is that?” he asked curiously.

Loki reached out for it and as his fingertips touched it Thor thought he saw a flash of green. He leaned forward, trying to get a better look, but whatever he thought he’d seen was gone. Probably a reflection from Loki’s polished metal mirror, Thor decided, and promptly forgot about it. Loki was studying the stone, and Thor noticed a slight tremble in his hand. “Something my mother gave me. She said it would keep me safe.”

“A magic thing?” Thor said dubiously, reminded of those long-ago rumors about Loki and his mother.

Loki shrugged. “So she believed.” His voice became bitter. “She should have kept it for herself.”

Thor remembered hearing something about the death of the woodcutter’s wife, but hadn’t paid any attention at the time. When he’d watched from the ramparts he’d only thought about the boy. The father had been there, but he was of little interest to Thor, and he’d never thought of any other relations the boy might have. 

Loki’s mother. His brothers. All lost. Only his father left. 

“What happened to her?”

“A fire.” Loki looked at the oil lamp. “She was careless. Knocked over a lamp. Or so father said. I was not there. All of life seems a loss.” He shoved the stone into the pouch and pulled the ties shut angrily, his face hard and set. “He hated her. He hit her. Why should I believe anything he said?”

“He hit you too,” Thor said, reminded afresh of the scars on Loki’s back.

Loki shrugged. “Isn’t that what fathers do?”

Thor couldn’t argue with that. His own back bore scars, blows given not at his father’s hand but at his father’s direction.

Loki was staring at the carpet now, shoulders slumping, his face set in sorrow at his memories. Thor had never seen him look that way. Loki knew much about him – no, Loki knew much about the Prince Thor who was seen in public. But he knew nothing about Loki except the few words they had shared inside the confines of this tent. He knew the blood lines of all of his friends and court nobles, their relatives, and a little bit about his tutors and fighting masters, but other people? It was as if the peasants had no lives of their own, as if they had no existence other than to serve.

He had never thought to think of these things. He wondered what else he did not know.

“A terrible thing,” Thor said at last. He took Loki into his arms, not out of lust but impelled by an instinct he did not understand. Loki leaned his head against Thor’s and held on tightly. He trembled, and gasped for breath once then sucked in his breath and began taking deliberate inhalations and exhalations. Thor recognized the trick; fighting masters always emphasized it, to keep strong emotion at bay; to calm and focus thoughts. It was good for more than war. This he knew.

Thor rubbed Loki’s back, circling his palm over the tense muscles, trying to find some way to comfort him, hoping he was doing the right thing. 

When Loki relaxed and lifted his head, Thor brushed his lips with a soft kiss. Loki kissed back, soft, gentle, but when his mouth opened and Thor’s did as well, the kiss became eager, hungry, starving, consuming them. Thor rose, pulling Loki to his feet with him, and pressed against him, their mouths still locked in a complicated dance of tongues and lips, their strong hands exploring backs and buttocks, fingers digging deep.

Thor managed to pull back moments later, his breath coming quickly, his cock a heavy weight between his legs. “Do you want to?” he asked, indicating the bed.

“If it is what you desire, my lord.” Loki’s mouth was red and wet from their kissing, his face flushed, eyes eager. 

“I always want to,” Thor boasted. “Do you?”

Loki huffed a laugh. “My wants are not in question.” 

“But I am asking. Do you want me to do this?” Thor glanced down. “I think you do; your body speaks for you.” Thor gave him a lustful smile, then felt the oddest feeling, as if he had suddenly lost his bearings. His expression faltered. He was doing things he didn’t understand. Loki was something more than a sordinn now, more than a servant, different from any other relationship Thor knew and understood, and these questions in his mind had no answers.

Loki was watching him closely, gauging his mood. He returned Thor’s smile, and Thor recognize this smile as genuine. “All right. Yes. Yes, I do want you.”

They took a minute to take off their clothing, and then Loki gave him a lustful smile. “Let me show you what I want.” Without giving Thor a moment to think Loki reached over to the table and busied himself for a moment. When he turned back his hand was oiled. He reached for Thor’s cock, looking up through his eyelashes at Thor’s face as his hand grasped Thor’s shaft. Pleasure shot through him as Loki’s hand spread the slick along his cock. Loki’s smile widened. He held his gaze for a brief moment, let go of Thor’s cock and looked down.

Thor followed his gaze and watched as Loki slicked his own cock with sure, knowledgeable fingers. The sight, the smell of the oil and Loki’s sex, made him painfully hard. Loki gave him a seductive smile, and pressed his slick cock against Thor’s. They ground against each other, the slick slide of their cocks moving against the other sending jolts of pleasure surging through him. Thor took charge. He put his huge hand around both of their cocks, rubbing them together. Loki sucked in a gasping breath, eyelids fluttering. 

Then Thor let go of both of their cocks and brought his fist up Loki’s length. Loki’s lips parted. Thor pressed his thumb to Loki’s cockhead and circled it, watching for every small change in Loki’s expression, every abandoned look in his eyes, listening for every small gasp of pleasure. Loki’s cock was more slender than his, longer than his. His hand, used to a certain width and length, forced him to focus less on himself and more on Loki. He grasped, rubbed, pulled, slow, then faster, everything he loved having done to him. Loki’s hips jerked, stuttered, and Thor lost himself in the action, in the pleasure, closing his eyes only to open them again as he wanted to see every shifting expression crossing Loki’s face. Loki kept watching him, and for an instant, before grabbing his own cock and losing himself in the pleasure of touch, Thor wondered why it felt so different, even better, doing this while looking into the eyes of someone he knew. When the climax of pleasure washed across that face Thor spilled as well.

After Loki cleaned them both with a cloth, Thor drew him down beside him in the bed. This felt right. This felt more right than anything he had ever experienced. With an unaccustomed feeling of contentment he fell asleep with one arm around Loki. 


	6. Chapter 6

Some time long past midnight Thor stirred and opened his eyes. The lamps were still burning. The encampment around them was silent; only a few night noises broke the stillness. His movement woke Loki who smiled, a smile Thor now recognized as genuine. Thor returned his smile, and then they moved their heads just enough to trade a soft kiss. In the near-darkness, in the silence, Thor felt as if they and they alone were in a space entirely separate from the rest of the world. When lust flared he had Loki ride him. The unfamiliar position, being able to look up at Loki, grasp his hard cock, see the want on Loki’s face, enflamed him and he finished quickly, Loki following an instant later, dropping down to lie on top of him for a short while before rolling to the side.

<img src="<https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132681887/>" alt="Illustration # 2/>

Thor wasn’t sleepy. He sat up. “Ale,” he requested.

Loki got up and poured the last of the ale into Thor’s cup. Thor took a sip, then handed it back. Loki didn’t hesitate, which pleased Thor in a way he didn’t understand. He took a small sip, handed it back. Thor smiled around the rim, took another sip, and over the course of moments, one small sip after another, they finished the ale.

They settled back on the bed, both lying on their sides, facing each other. 

“When the war is won and we go back to our homes,” Loki said lazily, “I imagine there will be a great procession of victory. And a feast. Much mead and meat, all the king’s largess. And a great pageant.” He looked dreamy at the prospect.

Thor took no pleasure in the thought of returning home, but he kept himself from admitting this. “Plays and spectacles,” Thor agreed. “Much revelry.” 

“And then, will your marriage be announced? To that noble lady, the daughter of Sir Ulaf?” Loki’s tone was neutral.

Thor started and reared up. Startled, Loki stood up and stepped back.

“Do you mock me?” Hearing Sif’s name was like the shock of cold water.

Loki flinched, his expression turned to fear. “I did not know I was not to ask about things all people know.”

_All people don’t know_ , Thor belatedly realized. What Sif had done had been kept secret, with her fate known to only a few.

No one in Asgard knew Thor’s part in it, and that he would keep forever secret.

“No marriage, not yet, and not to Ulaf’s daughter.” He didn’t intend to say any more than that. Loki now looked calmer and very curious. But Loki didn’t ask any questions, recognizing treacherous ground. Thor, still tense, found himself talking about what he had a hard time even thinking about it. “Sif… is gone.” Thor’s fists clenched tightly.

“I am so sorry to hear this, my lord,” Loki said, slipping back into his old form of address. Thor didn’t comment on this, so Loki went on, “That is a sad loss to the Realm. I had not heard news of this.”

“You –” Thor began, realization dawning. “You think she’s dead?”

A look of sheer surprise crossed Loki’s face, followed by one of apology. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“She may be dead,” Thor said finally, his shoulders tense, suddenly itching for action. But there was no foe he could fight to make this better – not his anger at her nor his fear for her. Not his rage at her father, nor at his own father. His anger for those who tried to force her to be who she wasn’t, or for everything he didn’t understand. He’d wanted things to be as simple as everyone else made them out to be, and he didn’t like to think about that part of himself that knew they were wrong. 

He wanted to pace, but the tent was too small, and looming over Loki suddenly seemed wrong. He sat back down on the bed. Loki sat down on the nearby chest. He was still tense, but no longer frightened. 

“I don’t know,” he went on in the face of Loki’s naked, unspoken curiosity. “No one knows. No one here, anyway.” Thor wished for more ale, but the bottle, now lying on its side in the corner, was empty.

Loki tracked his gaze and dipped his head. “Do you want me to get more?”

“No. Stay here.” Thor sucked in a breath through his teeth, and struggled to find a way to describe what had happened. “She… did not want me.”

“Ah,” Loki said, and not another word. Thor knew instantly Loki had come to the wrong conclusion, that Sif had betrayed their betrothal vow and cuckolded him with another, that she was no longer virgin, no longer suited to be wife, much less future queen.

“She did not do – what you think. At least, if she has, that is not known to me.”

“What – “ Loki started, then swallowed the rest of his words, unease battling with fierce curiosity.

Thor had never sworn an oath not to speak of this; his father’s towering rage and his own pain had been enough to convince him to stay silent. But the ale he’d drunk made that unspoken command seem very distant. “Sif – didn’t want to be who she was.” That didn’t seem right, and he tried again, “She didn’t want to be who she was born to be.” Words spilled out of his mouth, angry words, full of hurt and baffled confusion. His mouth became an open floodgate. “She was fierce and strongheaded and willful. She desired to live as men do. She asked to be trained as a warrior. She spoke of the Valkyrie of old as if such things could be done now, when women know their proper place. She did not want to be any man’s wife or any man’s daughter. She wanted to be her own self. Her father beat her for her unnatural desires and locked her in a tower in his castle.” Thor had gone to Ulaf’s hall and ordered his man to stand aside, demanding to see her. He caught one glimpse of her, her face blackened with bruises, before Tyr and his men had arrived by his father’s command and forced him to return with them to the palace.

Loki’s eyes widened. He hugged himself tightly and still leaned forward, intent on Thor’s every word. 

“ _Was_ ,” Loki said, when Thor stopped speaking. Thor looked a question at him, and Loki said, in a low, nearly inaudible voice. “You said she _was_ fierce. Strongheaded. Willfull. Did – ” Loki swallowed, his eyes growing dark and distant, haunted. “Did her father beat it out of her? Did she – change? Did she accept – how they wanted her to be?” 

Thor shook his head. “Despite all precautions, despite – ” He hesitated. “I was told that they – removed her clothing and searched her and found nothing concealed. And yet she found a way to escape the tower.” It flashed through his mind for just a moment to tell this final secret. The money he’d given her handmaid to bribe Sif’s guards. The handmaid who had come to clean his chambers, disguised in the uniform of a palace servant. The handmaid who had disappeared when Sif did. 

No, this he would tell no one. “No one knows how. Some say it was sorcery. The guards said they saw masked men climbing up the side of the keep and spiriting her away, but they each told the story in a different way, when questioned.” Loki held himself very still. “Her father believes she disappeared into the northern fastness and has forbidden any to speak of her.”

Loki raised his eyebrows, and Thor took his meaning. “I swore no oath to him and he knew better than to ask it of me. He thought it best he not mention her to me at all. He does not wish to face my rage.” He bit off his words, the anger rearing up as if it had never left him. “Nor does anyone else speak of her to me. It is as if she never lived.”

Loki shifted uncomfortably. “I have heard tales of the northern fastness,” he said in a low voice.

“That is where they say the Valkyrie once dwelled.” He and Sif had told each other many tales over the years. So detailed were her stories, and so often did she tell them, that he had imagined them clearly, a city high in a mountain valley, where everyone was free to live as they wished. He had often imagined her there, happy and free. But she had left him, and that still brought anger and sorrow. He missed his friend, and was still angry it had to happen at all. Still had dreams of her dying in a dozen different ways and he unable to protect her.

Loki nodded and hummed, his brows furrowed. “She may yet live,” Loki offered.

Thor shook his head, shoulders slumping. “Two women alone, in that wild land? Full of bears and wolves? I think not,” he said, his voice heavy with sorrow. “Those tales are just tales. No visitor has ever come from there to Asgard.”

“You loved her?” Loki asked.

Thor considered this. “She was different from other women. She did not want to be courted. She did not want to be touched, save when we sparred together. We did this in secret.” Thor grinned. “Not what people thought we did. She was like a friend, not a lover. Love – I don’t know. It had all been arranged, and I didn’t think to question it or want anything more. It was just the way it was. I felt…” he hesitated, searching for the right words. It was hard for a moment to find any words at all; his throat felt choked with all the words he didn’t know how to say. 

Loki was looking at him with an expression of such understanding that Thor suddenly knew he could put all his trust in him. “I felt she was the only person who truly knew me.” He pushed out a breath, took in another. “Now, father is looking for a new wife for me. I don’t want any of the court ladies – they’re all simpering or power hungry or just – not what I want. The Jotnar king has three eligible daughters. Their diplomats brought miniature portraits and Father told me to choose one and she will be my wife.” He spoke the latter in a mocking tone. He had no particular desire to be given in marriage to a stranger. “I was very angry, when she ran away.” That was true, and he still was. He had helped her, but now, when he caught the people who knew what had happened looking at him out of the corner of their eyes, he felt they thought him a fool for not keeping her in her place. And that filled him with rage. Losing his friend, fearing her dead – it angered him to feel so helpless. But now – speaking about her in the dark night, to this man he realized he trusted as much as he had trusted Sif; now, within this tent that seemed so apart from the rest of his world, he began feeling calm, he began feeling as if he could breathe freely again. 

“Do you miss her?” Loki looked like he had gone beyond the surface of Thor’s words and found some deeper truth beneath.

“I do. I miss her. Sif wasn’t like the others. We had fun together – laughed and joked. We could talk about anything. She told me once – she wished she could be a man, be my hunting companion. Not my wife. If she hadn’t left – maybe there could have been a way, once we married, for her to live as she wished….” 

Loki shook his head. “Have you ever heard of anyone escaping the fate laid for them at birth?” he asked, his voice heavy.

“I have not,” Thor admitted, recognizing the fantasy for what it was as he spoke those words. His own life was dictated by his rank. For her, it would have been more so. “Have you?”

“Tales and legends only.” Loki stared past Thor’s shoulder, a look in his eyes, as if he was seeing something he very much wanted but could never have.

“Did anyone in those tales change their fate?” Thor wondered if Loki knew tales he did not.

“Some. But there is always a price.” Loki’s voice carried the weight of that thought. Loki exhaled a sigh, remained quiet for a moment. “And where are the guards now?” Loki breathed, speaking past his obvious terror.

“Silenced.” Thor said. “Forever. If they had worked it out beforehand, told their stories the same way, they might have been spared. But Father knew them to be liars and had them executed.” He couldn’t bear to speak of how he had felt when he had heard that news. Bribery had been a coward’s way. He should have found some way to do something, to rescue her himself, to set her free on her own terms. He should have been stronger, braver, more clever. He should have found some way out of the palace on his own, some way to elude the ever-present palace guards, the courtiers, the servants. Find some way to elude everyone who dropped to a knee if they even caught a glimpse of his presence. The palace was always filled with people, and everyone knew his face and where he was supposed to be. He didn’t know how he could gotten out without being caught, and the helplessness he’d felt made him feel even less of a man. “I miss her,” he repeated. “I still do.”

A full shudder shook Loki’s body. Loki curled up in a frightened ball and that woke Thor to the dangers of his too-free tongue. “Do not speak of this to anyone,” he warned. 

“No. Never.” The look in Loki’s eyes showed Thor that he understood all too well the consequences of loose talk.

Thor said nothing. Silence surrounded them. A strange wild energy zinged through his nerves. He needed to get away, to be active. He became aware again of the quiet around them. “Listen!” He put a hand on Loki’s shoulder and Loki looked up.

“What?” 

“What do you hear?”

Loki gave him a perplexed look. He began to relax. “Nothing.”

“That’s it.” It was deep into the night now. The sounds of carousing, of revelry, of drunkenness, of men shouting in triumphant victory or infuriated loss at the gambling tables, of the merry voices of the sordinn greeting customers – all sound was long gone.

Thor opened the flap, looked outside. Some firepits were still burning, but the trampled grounds were empty and still. The soldiers knew better than to spend the entire night here; they needed to be back in their tents before the night was half gone in order to get some sleep and rise at dawn to be ready for whatever their commanders requested. 

He turned back inside, grabbed his clothes, got hastily dressed. “Let’s go out to the meadow.”

Loki’s eyebrows raised, and then he grinned. “Why not?” He gave him a reckless smile, had his clothes on in an instant, then slipped out and around Thor. He moved past the back of tent and into the woods beyond, looking once over his shoulder, a graceful figure caught in silver by the light of the waning moon. Thor plunged into the darkness after him, familiar with this path from earlier explorations of the woods. Loki was far ahead of him, concealed by outstretched branches, a vague shape glimpsed in the darkness. 

The meadow was minutes away and when he got there Loki was stretched out on the ground, looking up at the diamond starlight. Thor lay down beside him and looked up at the sky. The surrounding trees made a near-perfect circle in the sky, enclosing them in their own private world, separate from the communities of war.

Loki touched one hand to the top of Thor’s and they entangled their fingers together. “There is The Dancer.” Loki lifted his other arm and sketched out the lines of the constellation with a fingertip. 

Thor knew the sad story well. “Dancing to save her life, a perfect performance every time.” He didn’t speak the rest of it, and neither did Loki. She’d been rescued by the prince. The story should have ended then. But Thor knew how the rest of it went. Their escape, running to their deaths off a cliff. Their souls taken to the sky, to be written in the stars.

He rolled to face Loki, who did the same. 

“I need to know where you are, when we go back home,” Thor said, his heart heavy with thoughts of fate. “Will you do _this_ there?”

Loki shrugged. They both knew the places where sordinn could ply their trade were in the most dangerous, filthy parts of the city. 

“Don’t go there. I’ll find some way to send you money.”

Loki, head bowed, looked at him through his eyelashes. “Doubtless the palace will need firewood.” He caressed along Thor’s arm, shoulder to wrist, with the palm of one hand. “These hands will callus quickly.” He ended the caress with his fingertips touching Thor’s, then parting. “I would not be someone you would wish to touch.”

“Never,” Thor said, but he could tell Loki didn’t believe him.

Loki’s expression was solemn. “I hope you like whatever wife they choose for you as much as you liked Sif and that she bears you many fine children.”

Thor gave a derisive snort. “No one’s like Sif.” But his voice became pensive. “No one’s like you, either.”

Loki gave him a bittersweet smile. 

“What do you want?” Thor asked. “I’ll give it to you, if I can.”

“What everyone wants, of course,” Loki said, considering. “A home, enough to eat, and no need to labor from sun to sun. Or,” he started with a bitter twist, then softened his word, “no need to labor from dusk to dawn. I want to live like they tell in the stories about the faerie folks, in the land beyond the western sea, where the trees fruit year-round and the fish wander right into your lines and the deer walk over to your cabin and give their lives freely for your meals.”

Thor smiled, but it held an inward sharpness. He wanted to believe he could find some way to do this, to give Loki a better life. 

“And you, my lord?” Loki made the honorific an endearment. “What do you want?”

“I want…” What was right there before him, a fae creature in the starlight, like the changeling he was rumored to be. “…what I cannot have.”

Loki sat up slowly, his face gone solemn again. “You can have what is here right now,” he breathed, and when Thor sat up as well, Loki leaned forward and turned his face upward for a kiss.

Sometime later, dozing beneath the stars, Thor slipped into a dream of a faraway land. There was a stream full of fish. He and Loki were following it to some further place, laughing about something, but the dream frayed and tattered and vanished when Loki woke him.

“My lord, it’s nearly dawn,” Loki said with alarm.

“You don’t have to call me that,” Thor reminded him.

Loki’s lips curved in a pleased smile, but his face quickly became serious again. “If any see you with me now they will talk.”

“Let them,” Thor said, anger rousing and looking for a fresh target. But Loki was right. He dressed quickly, gave Loki a rough embrace, and watched him head toward the path to the encampment and disappear into the woods at the edge of the meadow. He made his way west through the intervening woodland, coming out onto the no-man’s land just as the sun was emerging from the horizon. He walked at a steady pace across the land and through the camp, as if this were some ordinary morning, and to everyone he encountered, it clearly was. Soldiers, already awake and tending to their campfires, bowed and waited as he passed, then quickly went back to their tasks and chatter.

His squire and bootboy were nowhere to be seen, and he noted the oddity with surprise. He went inside the tent – and stopped without taking another step. 


	7. Chapter 7

Hogun, Fandral, and Volstagg were waiting for him. They quickly stood up from where they had been sitting on camp stools. 

Thor halted. “Has ought occurred? Some change in the war.” He didn’t think so. Tyr would be there instead, or the Chief Messenger. Not his friends.

“No,” Fandral said, a brittle edge to a voice that was striving for calm pleasantry. “All is unchanged.”

Thor strode past them, booted feet heavy on the tough carpeting, past the sitting area, to where his breakfast lay waiting on the table. He sat down, grabbed a hunk of brown bread, took a bite, and reached for salt cod as well. “Where are my servants?”

“They’ll be back once we’ve spoken to you.” Volstagg stepped closer, his large bulk blocking out Thor’s view of the other two. 

Thor scowled up at him and waited for him to explain himself. He took a huge bite of the bread. 

“My Prince,” Fandral said, going around Volstagg. “May I sit?”

Thor waved a hand and Fandral pulled over a camp stool. Thor kept eating. He didn’t bother talking. Sleep would be good. He was not in any sort of patience with them right now.

Fandral waited out his silence, then gave up. “My Prince, we have concerns.” When Thor kept eating, he went on. “We come to you today out of our love for you and for the King and our land, for all the years we have fought together and shared ale and food together.”

“Say it plain,” Thor stood up abruptly. Fandral did the same. “Your prettified words are fine for the ladies, but I need no such smoke cover.”

“It is about the black-haired sordinn. The woodcutter’s son.” Fandral held himself tensely erect.

“How do you know who he is?”

“We asked.” Fandral’s clear unease irritated Thor. 

“My prince,” Volstagg interjected, “Why do you seek only him out? There is a feast entire awaiting you and yet you continually choose to partake of only one dish.”

Thor gave him a mirthless grin. “I like him.” He considered ordering them all out of the tent, but he knew watchful eyes and gossiping tongues were everywhere, ready to carry tales to his father. What he did in the encampment was the same as everyone else did – or nearly so – but having a disagreement with his closest friends would set tongues to wagging.

Fandral’s face was full of concern. “It is dangerous to like sordinns too much.”

Volstagg added, “This is not wise, young Thor.” Thor bridled, and Volstagg held up his hands and backed up a step. “We tell this to you now so you do not have to hear it from your father. Word is spreading; it may have already reached his ears. We tell you as friends. We are worried for you. You are besotted with this sordinn. You do understand that, when the war is over and we go home, you must never see him again.”

“The war isn’t over,” Thor said furiously. 

“Do you not understand what I am saying?” When Thor didn’t answer, Volstagg sighed and looked at the ground. “It is not right for me to guess what your father will say, should he find out. Be careful, my friend. Take another. Take many others. There are dozens to choose from, all of whom are eager for the honor of your company.”

“For the generosity of my purse, you mean.” Thor met his eyes, then Fandral’s, then Hogun’s. They had been his friends all of his life, he’d grown up with them, fought with them, caroused with them, felt more at ease with them than with anyone else, save Sif. But now they were looking at him with caution, as if there was something strange about him, and he in turn felt that they had somehow taken a step back and away, though they all stood there and held his gaze with worried eyes.

They’d never looked at him this way before, and he felt a sick sense of wrongness and a roiling rage. They, alone of all others, had been his friends, not those of his brilliant older brother; they had shown Baldr the utmost courtesy and deference, of course, but they had been at ease with Thor and they all had many adventures together.

They were beginning to seem like strangers.

“Thor,” Fandral tried again. “All will be well when we return home. We know what happens here is of no consequence. Here, we do as everyone else does. But in Asgard – think of home. Think of the fine pleasure houses in the city, full of lovely, lustful women. If you have tired of Gullveig, there are many other beautiful women at Delight’s Garden. So many houses of pleasure! You could try them all.” 

“I’ve had most of them,” It was a plain statement, not a boast. Of course he had. It was what was expected. They were the proof he showed the world that he was a man, despite his dreams at night of bedding other men. Not women.

“There are many others.” Fandral sounded almost helpless now, confused at Thor’s demeanor, plunging on anyway. “Away from the battlefield, we do not need these creatures to service us. Back home, we will have the pleasure of women’s company again.”

Back home, he would only be able to dream about men in the dark, alone in his own bed. Bedding men was only permitted here and now and never at home. He could never truly have what he wanted – not at home. 

He could never have what he truly wanted. And what he wanted was far more than a companion for the night. It had been just a handful of days. But already Loki felt like a part of him.

Anger flared, reaching a boil. He saw by Fandral’s eyes he sensed danger, like a man walking in the woods, thinking himself alone, then suddenly looking through a gap in the branches of a tree and seeing a wolf’s gaze.

“What say you, Hogun?” Thor turned a hot gaze to the Vanir.

Hogun said flatly, “It is said you are ensorcelled.” 

Both Fandral and Volstagg audibly gasped, staring wildly from him to Hogun and back again.

Thor kept his focus on Hogun. “Who says these things?” Thor demanded, rage exploding, racing like wildfire in his veins. Heart pounding, he grabbed his dagger, rage propelling his body to attack. His head pounded, but he kept himself from stabbing Hogun. “It’s a lie!”

Hogun didn’t back down, though the dagger came within a hair’s breadth of his throat. He held Thor’s gaze without flinching. Volstagg grabbed Thor’s arm. Thor half-turned, but Volstagg didn’t let go.

“Don’t do this, my friend,” he said, keeping his voice a calm rumble. “Think of how you would feel, to slay a friend.” Thor bared his teeth, head swimming, a red haze in his eyes. Volstagg held tight, and finally Thor lowered the dagger.

Fandral, apparently equally willing to take his life into his hands, said gently, “Would you even know if you were ensorcelled?”

Thor turned on him, and Volstagg’s grip tightened. “Thor, we are your friends, noble, true, and we speak these words from concern.”

“Have a care, Volstagg. Our long friendship will not protect you from my rage at the vileness dropping from your mouths.”

Volstagg’s gaze was steady. “Would you rather we not tell you what people say, before word reaches your father?” 

That stopped Thor cold. That was a conversation he knew he’d lose. How many times had he stood before his father, seething with rage at the old man’s finding fault with everything he did? What would he say, to a tale like this one? “Do not speak these words again.” He bit off every syllable. “To me or any other. We are not home. I will do as I please until then. When the war is over and we go home I will never see him again.” Saying those words felt like a razor in his throat, but the thought of his father’s rage loomed huge in his mind. He could feel, as if it had just happened, kneeling for hours on the hard cold stone of the throne room floor, his back aflame from a beating given to him by his father’s command, punishment for some small act of defiance. His father, cold and stern, his one eye filled with disappointment and disapproval, lecturing him on the duties and obligations of being his son, on the right way to behave, the right way to think. To remember, above all, that, as King, his word was final.

He was no longer a child. He was no longer naïve enough to think he could always get what he wanted. Everything that had happened with Sif had proven that. 

He understood all of that, and yet defiance flared beneath the heavy burden that being his father’s son required that he carry. The next time he challenged his father he was determined to be better prepared. He’d have to be more clever. He’d think of some way to keep Loki in his life. “As you say,” he responded to Fandral in a monotone, “the pleasure houses are always open.” He didn’t smile, did not put any effort into sounding convincing, but they all visibly relaxed, choosing to take his words at face value. But his thoughts were wheeling in circles, and the bars of the cage of custom he always felt surrounding him seemed even closer and more confining until his tent itself seemed airless. 

“Gullveig will certainly welcome you back,” Fandral said.

“Gullveig is talented,” Thor agreed distantly. “But there are many to choose from.” The thought held no appeal, but when the men smiled, relieved, he clapped Volstagg hard on the back and Fandral as well. He turned to Hogun, whose gaze betrayed nothing. Hogun dipped his head in a bow. Thor said nothing to him. A prince need never apologize. He escorted them to his tent door.


	8. Chapter 8

~~F~~ illed with a frantic energy, Thor went alone to the encampment late that afternoon. He knew he shouldn’t go there before nightfall, not with what had happened this morning, but what did it matter now? The war news was good. The things he had learned in Odin’s tent today indicated the war was nearly at an end. What difference did it make now if he kept seeing Loki? The time was soon coming when they would all return to Asgard. One wild plan after another to find some way he could keep Loki in his life raced through his mind. He beat back the vision of Odin’s certain rage if he found Thor was even considering defying custom. 

But also, somewhere in the back of his mind, Hogun’s accusation kept whispering its poison to him.

What if it were true?

No. He didn’t believe it, not for one moment. He knew his own mind. He knew his own self. He knew, also, that he could never tell his friends why he felt what he did for Loki – that he had finally found someone he wanted beyond momentary lust. Someone he wanted, in all ways.

And that thought too gave him pause, gave him sorrow, because all of his imagined plans kept crashing into the wall of reality. 

Loki wasn’t outside his tent, but there was no scarf pinned to the flap, so Thor went right in.

Loki was crouched over something on the floor. He started when Thor entered, made a gesture. Thor blinked when he thought he saw a flash of green light in the mirror, but when Loki leapt to his feet in front of the lamplight his shadow darkened the mirror.

“What were you doing down there?”

“I dropped something.”

“What?” Thor looked around, but there was nothing apparent on the carpet. 

“It – ” Loki swallowed. His eyes looked huge, frightened. “A token. From another customer,” he said warily.

Loki’s words triggered a surge of hot jealousy the instant they tumbled out of his mouth. Thor’s fists clenched Custom be damned; he’d pay to keep Loki exclusive from now on.

Loki still looked frightened and it made him feel shamed. He dropped his hands to his sides. Loki let out a breath and relaxed. 

“Do not accept any more customers.” Thor bit off every word. “I will pay you complete for every night.”

“For as long as the war goes on?” Loki whispered, nearly inaudibly, and Thor felt a sudden stab of anguish. 

From what he knew, that might be tomorrow. But he couldn’t speak of it, not to anyone. Rumors were flying, though. Everyone knew that the second, more powerful catapult had finally arrived. He could see by Loki’s expression that word had reached here too. “Yes,” he said. “For as long as the war goes on.”

And when it was over, unless he could come up with some plan, he might never see Loki again.

That reality hit him like a crashing wave. He shook his head, clinging to hope and determination. He’d find a way. He grabbed Loki and Loki grabbed him back. Their teeth clashed in a violent kiss, and then Loki was turning in his arms, breaking away, stripping off his clothing, kneeling, presenting his ass. They fucked in near silence, the sound of Thor’s balls slapping against his ass and their muttered gasps and groans the only sound within the tent.

Thor didn’t want to sleep. He knew he’d stay the night, but when the dawn came, it would be that much closer to when everything would change. He sent Loki out for food and, when he returned and they finished the meal, he rose and took Loki in his arms. He pressed a kiss to Loki’s temple, to his forehead, to his cheeks, to his lips. He slid his hands along his body, felt Loki’s hands on him in turn, learning new things about his body that he had been too lust-blinded to know before. The taste and texture of his skin. The way his breath hitched in pleasure. The feel of his body, the smell of it, the grace of his every motion. The angle of his neck as his mouth met Thor’s for a kiss. 

He drew Loki down upon the bed and they rutted against each other, used oil, used their hands, lay facing each other when they both had spent. One of the lamps guttered, went out. In the still-strong light from the second lamp Thor saw that Loki’s eyes had closed, his eyelashes black fans against his pale skin. He’d drifted into sleep, and the hand that had been clasping Thor’s arm was now tucked close to Loki’s side.

Thor didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. Too much had happened today; too much was racing through his mind. He stirred restlessly and Loki stirred as well.

“What troubles you, Thor?” Loki whispered. The remaining lamp still burned steadily and its light cast Loki’s face in half light, half shadow. 

Thor watched him for a long moment, searching his eyes, his expression, committing them to memory. What was going to happen on the morrow would change everything. Why even speak of this, when it was almost time to leave? The thought cut at him, dug deep, and he wondered at himself. When had this happened, that he had come to feel so much for someone who, if this war had never started, he never would have met?

Something else was whispering in his mind, something he’d managed not to think about, now intruded again. The accusation Hogun had made insisted he pay attention, speak the words. He didn’t believe what Hogun had said, but he had to say the words. Loki needed to know what was being said. “I have heard talk that you have ensorcelled me,” Thor said at last.

Loki went absolutely motionless, and his skin went as cold as if he’d been swimming in the river. “This is dangerous talk!” He sat up, panicked and angry. Thor sat up too and laid one hand on Loki’s arm. It was covered in goosebumps, and he felt a chill himself. 

Loki didn’t seem to notice the touch. He rushed on, the lamplight full on his face, his eyes blazing, his words ragged with strong feeling. “You must know the tales that follow me. No matter what I do or say – it means _nothing!_ I see the way some people look at me. All my life, the same! They say my mother was a witch and I am fae – but tell me now, my lord; I lie here in your arms, a man like any other.” When Thor remained silent, Loki’s voice went quiet and flat. “Do you believe these tales?”

“I do not.” Loki let out a shuddering breath, but then words poured out of Thor’s mouth without thought, “But why do I feel these things for you?”

Loki’s expressive face showing his confusion, then anger. “What things?” he demanded.

“I want to be with you – in the daylight as well as the night.” Thor hunted for words to explain what he was feeling. “I want to go out hunting and fishing with you. And riding. In the sunshine. I want to be with you at all times. I think of you all the time and do not understand why.” 

“So you do believe it.” Loki’s voice trembled and his eyes widened in shock and hurt. He pulled his arm away from Thor’s touch.

“I don’t!” Thor protested. “But – ”

“But **what**?” The words seemed torn out of him. He pulled back, breathing hard, anger already being replaced by wariness.

“Then why do I feel these things?” Thor’s mouth twisted in frustration.

Loki’s expression turned to one almost of pity – almost as if he were sad for Thor. It made Thor feel strange, confused; how could a peasant know something a king’s son did not? “Sometimes people feel these things,” Loki went on. “Do you not know of any man in your court who loves their wife? Or is such unknown among the nobility?” 

“Yes.” Volstagg with his wife and young children. How happy they always seemed, the times he had been in their hall. Almost in a world of their own. “I do know of such.” His heart was beating faster. His voice sounded hoarse to him.

“And yet you think I have bespelled you.” Loki’s eyes flared again hot anger. Thor opened his mouth to protest, but Loki went on. “I could ask you,” Loki snarled, “the same. For you have caused thoughts to rise in me that I know are impossible. You make me dream of things that can never be.” He stopped, swallowed, dropped his gaze, and Thor had to lean closer to listen as Loki’s voice became a whisper. “That we could be together, that you could say to your father, ‘here is the one I love and will live with.’”

_The one I love._ Thor’s eyes widened as the idea seized hold of him. Was this love? He’d never felt anything like it before for another person. Not this all-encompassing need to be with someone, this obsessive desire, but more than that – this need to know everything about Loki, to share everything with him. 

“We do not live those lives, Thor, and yet I dream. What have _you_ done to _me_?” Loki demanded. The anger was gone now, leaving longing and pain. There was a sheen of tears in his eyes.

“I do not know,” Thor said. He was not used to being confused. He didn’t like it. Loki’s words had created a picture that he yearned for. And yet it was impossible. Loki was right. They did not live those lives. And yet he dreamed, as much as Loki did, and wanted it to happen. “What you said – I wish it could be so.” He saw that Loki heard the pain in his voice, a longing equal to Loki’s own.

“You must know,” Loki said, dropping his gaze, “these things are not meant for me. Or for you, either,” he added on the ghost of a whisper.

Thor felt rage rising again, anger, frustration. “Why not?” he said. “Why can’t we make it so?” He knew he was a fool when he said it.

“What your father would say, if you said any of this to him?”

Thor knew exactly what Father would say, and it left him feeling a hard hot core of hate that he dared not speak of. 

“This is dangerous, Thor. I am sordinn – ” Loki said the word like it was bitter ash on his tongue, “ – worth nothing, less than nothing. And you are the heir to the throne.” He swallowed, hard. “You cannot risk everything for me.”

Thor opened his mouth to protest, but Loki held up a hand, and Thor realized, with surprise, that he was willing to let Loki take charge here.

“I – care about you, Thor. Very much. But you need to know – we _both_ need to know – that what we want we cannot have. It’s too dangerous for you.” Loki’s voice trembled at the end. He held his gaze but a tear tracked down his face.

Thor was breathing too quickly, anger and grief tearing at his soul. He felt struck down, trapped and raging inside a cage. Loki didn’t look away. Thor reached out, wiped away the tears beneath Loki’s eyes. “It’s too dangerous for **_you_**. Why have I not seen this?” The realization, sharp and overpoweringly heavy, engulfed him. This new accusation, combined with the suspicions Loki had been faced with his entire life…

Thor turned aside to conceal the tears in his own eyes. He donned his clothing slowly, and took in some deep breaths. He then turned to face Loki again. “I wish I could give you more,” he choked out, then gripped Loki’s shoulders and placed a gentle kiss on his mouth. Loki’s arms came around him, held tight. He embraced Loki as well, wanting to cling. Loki moved to rest the side of his head against Thor’s and they stood still and silent for a long moment.

Then Thor dropped his arms, stepped back, turned away and walked out of the tent. He heard the shifting of the cloth behind him and knew that Loki had come out as well and was watching him as he walked away.

The bombardment started again the following morning at dawn. Thor had barely made it back in time, but his squire had him in his armor and ready to go without delay. When he reached his father’s tent, there was a war council in progress. Father raked him head to foot with a judgmental stare, and gave him the barest greeting. Thor knew he wasn’t late – but they’d clearly started without him. Thor took his place besides Tyr and listened carefully to the news and the plans.

The new catapult was being assembled. In addition, there had been good news from the sappers. All was ready.

When Thor and Tyr arrived at the battlefield the catapult was fully assembled, larger and more powerful than the last. At Tyr’s command, it was put to good use. Huge stones were repeatedly flung at Malekith’s fortress walls. The relentless pounding went on all day, while the return arrow fire was patchy and showed that, at long last, the Alfar were running out of arms.

“They’ll surrender soon,” Fandral said at one point as he and Thor and the other warriors stood in an imposing but useless display across the battlefield, out of range of the enemy’s archers.

“Not until we break their walls down,” Hogun countered.

“That will be soon,” Volstagg added cheerfully. 

“You’ll be back to your wife and children before you know it,” Fandral said.

“And you can hope your many mistresses have not forgotten you.”

“I’m wounded.” Fandral affected a pose, then glanced at Thor, who was ignoring all of them. “Thor? What is the first thing you will do?”

“Let us win the war and plan after,” Thor muttered.

“See that part.” Bjorn indicated a portion of the Alfheim wall. “That will break first.”

“I wager it will be the section beneath the second battlement,” Fandral countered.

“I bet ten raven coin I’m right,” Bjorn said.

“You’re on.”

Thor ignored them and kept his attention on the stronghold. The catapult hurled another boulder to raucous cheering, and from this distance he could see the cloud of debris the impact caused on the enemy’s wall. There was no purpose in betting. Thor knew what his friends did not: the sappers had broken through the obstruction and would be laying their final explosives under cover of today’s bombardment.

But they were right. It would be over soon. Soon they would go home.

The thought brought him no cheer.


	9. Chapter 9

Thick smoke blotted out the sun, blackened the sky. It was late afternoon, but none would have guessed it. Thor, at long last dismissed from his father’s side, walked through the streets untouched, his good broadsword at his side, his scarlet cloak, now torn in several places, a signal to all of his royalty. Soldiers swarmed his steps, keeping him safe from attack from roaming bands of Alfar citizens refusing to accept their defeat. They would learn their lesson, Thor knew, beneath father’s orders and Tyr’s boot. Their King was captive. Inside his overrun castle Malekith was in chains, under guard in his very own chambers. The common soldiers, set loose in the city, rabid from the long weeks of waiting, howled their way down every street and alleyway as they rushed to claim their prizes of coin and gold and flesh.

Thor wanted nothing to do with it. Before in previous battles, he’d lived for this moment – victory, at long last! Now, his armor scarred from battle, and his cloak, red from more than dye, and his lungs, filled with air stinking of smoke, and the alley leading to the stronghold’s walls filled with the wreckage of Alfar lives, seemed to him almost like a defeat. 

The war was over. They’d won. Why did he not rejoice?

He kept walking. There, ahead, the broken city wall, the surrounding area littered with corpses. Tongues of red flame licked their way through wooden outbuildings while some Alfar desperately tried to quench the fires. The pulverized remains of the wall broken apart from the sheer force of the explosion the sappers had set off lay in jagged heaps, the crumbled mortar spilling everywhere. He walked past, walked out, walked through the now empty blackened wasteland of the land between the castle walls and the military camp. Particles of ash drifted across the ruined ground like grey snow. Even the memory of the crops that had once grown here was wiped from existence; the destruction wrought when the fires the Asgardian soldiers had set to destroy the city’s food supply were met by the Alfar fire arrows had left earth so thoroughly devastated there was no hint it had ever sprouted grain. The clouds above were stained red with the reflection of the fires below and the acrid smell of smoke filled his lungs with every breath.

When he reached the soldiers’ camp only a few torches burned, mostly around Odin’s tent, his own, and those of Tyr and the other generals. Some guards remained there by Odin’s command, but everyone else was in the city, reaping the violent rewards of war. 

He passed through the camp, went on through the weedy patch of land leading to the encampment. Up ahead the lights were bright and he could hear the howls and shrieks of celebration. 

All the torches were lit. He could see people running and dancing, hear them whooping with laughter. As he got closer he could see the wild expressions on every face and the dancing bodies contorted in the delirium of intoxication. In the central area a bonfire had been built, and sordinn and barkeeps and games masters and launderers and cooks mingled and danced and drank from bottles and flasks. The thick black smoke drifting from the ruined city mingled with the white smoke from the bonfire, an acrid fog penetrating his lungs. 

One of the games masters saw him. “Ho, Prince Thor!” He dropped drunkenly to one knee. “All hail our victory! Sad for us, though,” he said in a mutter Thor barely heard, then suddenly came out of his stupor. Thor did not call him on treason. “We all go home now. All are overjoyed!” he shouted loudly.

“Yes,” Thor said in a monotone. “All are overjoyed.”

He pressed his way through the crowd, searching for Loki, impatient and spurred on by a feeling of loss. The war was over. Everything would change. And so would this place, which now meant far more to him than the prospect of going home.

He didn’t want this to change. But it was changing, had changed. He still clung to hope that he could find some way for them to be together, once back in Asgard. His gut clenched as he looked into every face, searching for Loki. When people recognized him, they drew back and attempted to kneel, though more than one fell over in the attempt, bottles crashing to the littered ground. Some people were still wheeling around the bonfire, oblivious to his presence. Then, in a flicker of an instant a black-haired figure danced past him, facing the fire, not glancing to where Thor stood a short distance away. 

Happy to see him, Thor circled around the bonfire in the opposite direction and when Loki came around again, Thor seized his arm and pulled him out. 

Loki had been laughing, but he stopped abruptly and tried to yank his arm away from Thor’s grip while raising his other arm defensively. Thor held firm and Loki staggered slightly. He regained his footing quickly, his eyes brightening when they met Thor’s gaze. He stopped struggling and suddenly leaned against Thor who quickly adjusted his stance to accept Loki’s weight. Thor stroked his back. Loki wrapped his free arm around Thor’s waist. Thor let go of his other arm and looked down into Loki’s intoxicated eyes. Loki grinned up at him, regained his footing, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth in clear invitation.

Thor didn’t stop to think about the fact they were surrounded by other people. He covered Loki’s mouth with his own. Loki’s lips tasted of mead and Thor invaded his mouth with his tongue, the better to taste it, taste Loki and the honey wine. An overwhelming surge of want shot through him. He tightened their embrace and reached to grab Loki’s ass, pressing him close. Loki rubbed against Thor, his strong woodcutter’s arms holding Thor so tightly that Thor, with a thrill, felt he was being claimed. He ground against Loki, pulled back for a gasp of air, then sought Loki’s mouth again, fusing his mouth to Loki’s as if they were one being. 

When he pulled back again and glanced over Loki’s shoulder, there was Fandral standing just a few feet away, staring right at them.

Thor pulled back a bit further and gave Fandral a hard glare. Fandral took a step back, then another, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.

“What?” Loki asked, turning as well, but all he saw was the dancing and staggering crowd. They weren’t the only ones to have abandoned privacy. More of the King’s men had arrived, some laden with necklaces and bracelets. One of them was fucking a sordinn over a camp table, and others were adorning sordinn with jewelry, others still were heading – some stumbling drunkenly – toward their tents.

Thor grinned at that sight and turned to look at Loki. The flickering light cast wild shadows across Loki’s excited face. Loki ran his tongue lewdly across his lips and Thor was tempted to push him to the ground and have him right there.

Loki tugged Thor’s arm. “Let’s go,” he shouted to him in the din, and Thor followed his lead, not even questioning that he was allowing Loki to make the decision. No one was going to question anything anyone did this night.

They wove through the dancing bodies and the obstacles of those on the ground, some passed out, others having sex. The smoke, the dancing firelight, the sounds of fire crackling and intoxicated voices filled the air as they, Loki in the lead, turned into the ragged lane where the sordinn’s tents were grouped. Thor didn’t even think about pinning the scarf to the tent door, and followed Loki as he slipped inside. One lamp was still burning; the other one was unlit. Dangerous to leave it lit, Thor thought, and then didn’t think at all when Loki reached for him.

They fell together on the bed, rolled a bit, and then managed to simultaneously sit up. They began pulling off their clothing. Thor hurled his blood-stained cape on top of the chest, then ripped off his tunic. Loki was already naked and Thor moved quickly to rid himself of his trousers. He pushed them off the bed before rolling back toward Loki.

Loki was smiling at him, such an open and loving smile. Thor could smell the mead, and he knew drunken smiles all too well. But knew, gut-level, Loki’s smile wasn’t just the smile of a man who loves the world while in his cups. No, Loki’s smile was something true and personal. Something just for him.

He bent over Loki, felt Loki’s arms go around his back. He caught Loki’s lips in a soft kiss. Loki gave a long pleased sigh when Thor broke the kiss. Thor rolled them both on their sides so he could keep looking directly at Loki. He ran his fingers slowly through Loki’s short hair. Loki shivered at the touch, that wide intoxicated smile reappearing on his lips. Thor, filled with a vast surge of love and need, greedily explored his neck, his shoulders, his back, his hips, his thighs, claiming every inch of flesh he could reach with his mouth and hands. Loki returned the gestures, eyes dreamy. Thor tasted Loki’s lips again, kissed him long and deep. The weight of his rising cock demanded attention, but he did not want to hurry this. He wanted every minute to last. He did not want to think of tomorrow.

They made slow love, Thor ignoring the voice in his head that whispered, _this is the last time._ Loki came first, his eyes shut, his mouth falling open as Thor milked his cock. Thor loved it, loved that he could give Loki this pleasure. Then Loki grasped his cock, his skilled hand erasing Thor’s every thought. 

After he spilled, after he opened his eyes, he breathed before he could think, “I wish I could keep you with me forever.”

Loki’s pupils dilated. “You truly mean that?” he said, slurring his words. He smiled, and that smile was that of a prisoner being shown an open door to freedom. Then Loki’s expression turned melancholy and tears appeared in his eyes. “I wish it could be so.”

“I do too. I don’t want to lose you.” The words felt like lead. Loki wiped away his own tears and didn’t say anything else. Loki settled one arm over Thor’s waist. Thor watched Loki drift into sleep just as the lamplight burned out.

Dim light was penetrating the walls of the tent when Thor awoke. Daylight already. He tensed, got up, dressed quickly, then stuck his head outside and saw that it was well after dawn. 

The ground was trampled and stray pieces of clothing had been dropped here and there. A few people were about. Some of the tents were already down, and the sight hit Thor in the gut. 

Loki, looking paler than usual, shadows beneath his eyes, came to stand by his side. Thor dropped the tent flap, shutting out the sun, shutting out the world outside. Filled with a sudden surge of fear, he grabbed Loki by the shoulders and said insistently, “If you need me for anything, now or back in the city, get word to me. You have the medal, if you need it.”

Loki pressed his lips together. “That is not wise. My lord.”

Hearing his title from Loki’s lips, spoken in almost the exact tones Loki had used when they had first met, made his gut twist. “I don’t care,” he said stoutly.

“You will. You should,” Loki amended. He bit his lip, then blanked his face. “We both know how the world works.”

Thor swallowed against rage, rage and anguish that he could not somehow remake the world to be what he wanted. His fists clenched. “There must be some way. If I were King,” he said, and Loki, swift as a snake, held his hand to Thor’s mouth. 

“Don’t say it,” Loki whispered. They both knew it was treason, to speak in any way of the King’s death.

“I **will** see you again,” Thor insisted.

But Loki’s expression reminded him that he did not dare go to the places in the city where the sordinn plied their trade. Everyone knew the Prince’s face. It wouldn’t be safe, for either of them.

“Goodbye,” Loki said, his eyes overbright.

Thor grabbed him, held him close, kissed him deeply. Loki hugged back, hands digging in, tight, possessive. And then Loki let go.

Thor swallowed against pain, against anger that could have no expression. He turned, without speaking, and walked out of the tent.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains disturbing and violent content. After consideration, I changed the Archive Warning from “No Archive Warnings Apply” to “Graphic Depictions of Violence” and edited the last tag in the “Additional Tags” box to reflect this change. If you want a spoilery explanation regarding the chapter warning leave a comment. I'll reply with the information and then erase my reply so no one else will see the spoiler.

Halfway back to the camp, sunk deep in his thoughts, Thor slowed as he saw an organized party of about a dozen men approaching. All around Thor other stragglers, some still drunk, were returning from the encampment, but all of them came to a halt as it became clear who the man leading the party was: War General Tyr.

Could they possibly be heading to the camp for entertainment? In broad daylight? Then Thor shrugged. What did he care? The war was over and in a matter of days he would be home again.

Nothing would ever be the same. Every step took him further away from Loki. He would always be aware of this loss, of finally having someone he wanted, of finally being able to be who he was, if only in a dimly-lit tent.

Of finally having someone to love, who loved him.

He kept moving forward, weighed down by his feelings, not paying attention to much of anything, until he became aware Tyr and his men were heading directly toward him. Thor narrowed his eyes and kept walking, forcing himself to move in a steady, confident stride. He stopped when they stopped, a few feet apart.

Tyr stepped forward, eyes cold, gaze flat as a snake’s. “The King requests your presence.”

“What for?” Thor demanded.

Tyr’s chest expanded as he sucked in a deep breath. “The King **_requires_** your presence.”

Probably for some post-battle discussion and breaking camp plans, Thor decided. It would be expected. He looked over Tyr’s men. As required of official guards, they were all in armor. “Where are you going?”

“We go on the King’s orders.” Tyr’s tone warned against questioning him.

Thor ignored the implication. “And those orders are?”

“For me alone. Go now, my Prince.” In Tyr’s mouth, the word became a term of contempt, and Thor bridled.

“You will not speak to me like that!”

“In what way am I speaking to you?” Tyr did not have the silk and polish of the diplomats; his voice was iron forged in fire. Behind him, his men stirred uneasily, and he saw several of them glance from him to Tyr and back again, torn between loyalties.

“You will speak to me with the respect you owe my rank,” Thor growled.

Tyr nodded. His expression froze in a mask of respect and he lowered his head in a proper courteous bow.

Over Tyr’s shoulder, Thor saw Fandral hovering behind him. Further away, Volstagg was on the approach. A spike of unease hit his gut.

Fandral ignored his frown and gave him a charming smile. He stepped to Tyr’s side. “Thor,” he said, “He’s right. Your father does want to speak to you now.”

“Right.” Thor knew he shouldn’t even have hesitated to obey the command, but what could possibly be so important as to permit Tyr to walk right up to the knife-edge of disrespect? 

Fandral took his arm in a friendly gesture and Thor finally looked away from Tyr and took a step in the direction of the soldier’s camp. Tyr took the opportunity to make a gesture, and his men broke to the side and went around them, heading to the encampment.

Volstagg joined them and they went toward the solder’s camp. Volstagg told a terrible joke. Thor didn’t laugh. Fandral began filling the air with chatter about how wonderful it would be at home, the victory parties that would be held, the sagas that would be sung, the women who would be falling into their arms.

Thor let it wash over him. His mood was as dull and grey as the smoke haze that remained in the sky. They were almost back at the camp when he commented, “I would have thought Tyr would be in a better mood. Everyone’s celebrating our glorious victory. They’ll be singing songs about him in every tavern. What crawled up his ass?”

Fandral laughed nervously and Volstagg didn’t respond at all.

“Oh!” Thor said in mock surprise, trying to fake a joke. “It’s been a long war. Maybe Tyr just wants to get laid at least once before going home.”

Fandral snickered, but the note was false, and when Thor looked at Volstagg he saw pity in his eyes. He stopped dead still. Fandral and Volstagg did as well and turned to directly face him. “What’s going on?” Thor demanded.

Volstagg laid a friendly hand on Thor’s arm. Thor jerked it away.

“Your father needs to see you now.” Volstagg, ordinarily so full of good humor, was dead serious. He and Fandral glanced at each other, and Thor suddenly remembered: last night, at the encampment. Fandral had witnessed him kissing Loki.

Without thinking, he broke away from them and began running full out toward the encampment, Fandral and Volstagg racing behind him.

Thor headed straight toward Loki’s tent, his steps faltering at the horrifying sight. The tent had been knocked over. Loki’s few possessions were strewn across the ground. The lid on his wooden chest had been torn off, and the oil lamps had been smashed. The mattress and pillows had been torn apart and the bedframe broken.

One of Loki’s shirts lay ripped in half across the dirt-smeared remnants of a pillow. 

His heart was racing, faster and faster. “Where is he?” he demanded, spotting a frightened face peering around the corner of another tent. He leapt forward, grabbed the sordinn, one of the blonds, and shook him. “My Prince,” the man gasped, staring at him in horror, pointing wildly toward the far end of the encampment.

Just then two sets of arms grabbed him and pulled him back. The sordinn sprinted away and dodged around the other tent. Thor struggled and threw off his attackers, whirled, pulled out his dagger and nearly sliced Fandral’s arm when he threw it up protectively from where he was sprawled on the ground. Volstagg stood up, pulled Fandral up as well, and they both kneeled to Thor, fear clear in their eyes. 

“My Prince, we did not mean – ”

He didn’t care. He’d already turned away and was sprinting toward the opposite end of the camp, to where the other sordinn pointed, running impelled by a sense of fear like none he had ever felt in his life.

He tore along the zigzagging pathway between the sordinn tents, his fear urging him faster and faster. He veered through the makeshift kitchen area and cleared the further end of the encampment, pounding his way past the cluster of plain brown tents that housed the rest of the encampment’s workers. He headed straight toward the walls of wagons that marked the end of the encampment, barely noticing that some were already half-prepared for the journey home. 

Some of Tyr’s men were there. An instant later he was surrounded by so many of them they had his arms pinned behind his back after he’d only been able to knock down two of them. Raging and swearing in outrage at their presumption, shouting out orders that were ignored, he struggled wildly in their grip.

Tyr emerged between two wagons.

“Your father requested your presence, my Prince,” Tyr said in a flat, passionless voice. “What are you doing here, my Prince?”

“Where is Loki?” Thor demanded.

Tyr didn’t pretend that he didn’t know who he was talking about. A twist of disgust flashed across his face. “Your sordinn is a witch and you have been ensorcelled.” 

“That’s a lie! I order you to let me go!”

Tyr didn’t answer, and Thor felt an edge of panic. Tyr had **_never_** disobeyed him. He was the King’s only surviving son – there were none higher than he. If Father was that angry –

Tyr reached inside a leather bag, pulled out the rattling contents and threw them at Thor’s feet. Thor stared down at a set of scattered runestones. “We found these hidden inside a chest in his tent. His guilt is clear.”

There – the stone Loki said he got from his mother. _She said it would keep me safe,_ Loki had said. Thor didn’t think before speaking. “That was his mother’s.” The guards had loosened their grip and he made an aborted move to grab for it before being caught by strong arms and held tight again.

“What do you want with that, my prince?” Tyr’s gaze changed, hardened with suspicion, and suddenly Thor realized what others must feel when caught and pinned before that condemning gaze, face to face with an executioner moments before he dealt out death.

“He had this too.” Tyr displayed the safe-conduct medal.

A flash of hope caught instantly on the knife-edge of horror. “Have you taken him to Father?” He wanted to believe it; wanted to believe this was why everyone was so insistent he go immediately to his father. He kept his expression and voice hard, ferocious; he met Tyr’s gaze with all the force of his rank and personality.

“No.” 

That one hard word sent Thor’s stomach plummeting with dread. “Where is he? It is the King’s inviolable order that any who possesses one of these medals **_must_** be taken to the presence of the King. You know that! Did he give it to you – and you disobeyed my father’s order? **_Where is Loki_** _?”_ he demanded again.

“Your father’s order,” Tyr said, his voice hard, “does not apply to thieving witches.”

“He is not a witch!” Thor insisted.

“Prince Thor,” – and was that a light of pity in Tyr’s eyes? mixed with contempt? Thor’s hands itched for a weapon to slay him where he stood – “I know you would never have given this token to a sordinn had he not snared you with foul sorcery! And now,” his expression became even uglier, “we know why the siege took so long, why the sapper’s equipment broke, why there were constant obstacles. Foul sorcery!” 

The accusations were stunning – and terrifying. It hit Thor then – the realization that his rank no longer protected him, his rank did not protect Loki. Not from charges like these. He also suddenly realized the murmurings of the crowd from just beyond the wagons were not those of drunken revelry, but rather something uglier and more barbaric.

**_Loki had not been taken to Father._ **

The men holding him had loosened their grip just enough. He stepped back hard with all his weight on the booted feet of the man behind him, who shouted. Thor turned, grabbed one of his arms, pulled and shoved one man right into another, tripped a third, knocked over a fourth, then broke and ran through the spaces between the wagons and through the crowd beyond them, dodging between people too startled to stand aside, their mouths dropping open at this fleeting glimpse of their Prince.

Loki was there, tied to a stake, ropes crisscrossing his chest, dirt and blood smeared on his face and body. He was looking from side to side, panicked. Men were approaching, carrying tinder and kindling.

Thor roared and pounded forward. Tyr, from behind him, shouted a command. He’d almost reached Loki when he was caught from behind. Loki’s terrified gaze swept past him, never once meeting his gaze.

The men behind Thor dragged him back. Thor howled Loki’s name, but he was staring off at some point behind him now. Someone tore his cape from Thor’s shoulders, then his arms were trussed behind him almost instantly despite his struggles. Thor thrashed and screamed, “I order you! Let me go! Step back, in the name of the King!” 

No one listened. They held him in place there, the mass of gawking soldiers and encampment dwellers behind them. Men were piling the kindling around Loki who struggled as best he could. 

“All of you!” Thor roared. “I order you to let me go, or you will not live another day once I am King! I so swear it!”

The men around him muttered and someone to his left loosened his grip. He pushed hard at the opening, but Tyr was suddenly directly in front of him. “I act in the King’s name,” he growled in a tone that brooked no questioning of his authority. His soldiers strengthened their hold on Thor, holding him immobile. He howled in defiance, caught too tightly to move. 

One of Tyr’s men stood from where he was preparing the tinder and signaled readiness. Another stepped forward and handed Tyr a blazing torch. 

Thor screamed “NOOOOO!” as Tyr approached Loki.

“I curse you all!” Loki snarled, his gaze sweeping the crowd, never once focusing on Thor. “You bring upon your selves the Wolf Age and the Fire Age when your enemies will overwhelm you!”

People stirred uneasily. One shouted, “Tell that to Malekith. His head is now on a pole!” But others muttered in fear at Loki’s invocation of the end of days, tried to surge forward, and were held back by guards.

The talk got louder. “Burn him!” someone shrieked and others took up the chorus: “Burn him!”

Tyr touched the torch to the kindling. A small flame caught, spread. Thor screamed and shouted. Flame licked its way along one piece of wood, flared on another. Tyr touched the torch to several other places on the pyre. Smoke billowed up. 

<img src="[ www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132018553/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132018553/)" alt="Illustration # 3/>

Thor went wild and, hands still tied, threw himself against the man to his right, rolled, got to his feet and ran over the rough ground, trying desperately to break the bonds tying his hands behind his back. He only made it a few steps before he was grabbed and hauled back.

That’s when the screaming began.

Tyr shouted something, and someone tossed Thor’s cape over his head. Disoriented, he tripped over something on the ground and fell, bringing down the two men holding his arms. The cape fell off in the struggle and he bucked, kicked, and head-butted any body part he could reach. Everyone was shouting at once but the horrible screaming wouldn’t stop, and it sent spikes through his brain, swords through his heart. He was pulled to his feet again. He bit at the nearest hand and tried to turn away from the surging crowd. A sharp command from Tyr and he was pushed to the ground, men sitting on all his limbs. 

Then the cape was over his face again, muffling his screamed curses. He kept bucking and struggling, but strong cords were wound around his ankles and his shins. Everyone shifted. The cape fell away again, revealing the faces of the men holding him down, their images burned into his brain. He inhaled a sharp lungful of smoke and began coughing, horrified beyond comprehension at the knowledge that Loki was burning. They rolled him roughly over, planting him face down in the dirt. His arms were jerked behind his back and his wrists were tightly bound. Panting, cursing, some men grabbed his shoulders, other men grabbed his feet, and he was lifted and carried off.

“Loki!” he shouted. But the only sounds he heard were the heavy breathing of the men carrying him and the licking and crackling of flame. 


	11. Chapter 11

<p>“I will have no argr son!!!” Odin roared in Thor’s face.</p>

<p>Still bound hand and foot, Thor was only upright because two of Tyr’s men held him. His mind was in agony – the pain in every part of his bruised and battered body seemed distant and unreal. His mind was a battlefield, howling grief and incandescent rage blocking out bodily pain. His wrists were bloody and raw from his struggles; his hands ached to kill, to strangle Tyr, to kill Odin. </p>

<p>This was not his father screaming at him, face wildly contorted, spittle flying from his lips.</p>

<p>This was a monster screaming at him. </p>

<p>“Murderer!” he screamed back and Odin struck him, a hard punch to the jaw that thrust his head to one side and ignited sparks in his vision. Blood spurted from his split lip. His ears were ringing.</p>

<p>Odin spat some order and the guards forced his head forward again, held it in place. Odin thrust something in front of his face. It took him a minute to focus, to see the safe passage medal inches from his eyes.</p>

<p>Odin’s face blazed with contempt. “It is said you gave this to that ergi whore!” He dropped it and ground it into the dirt. </p>

<p>Thor spit in Odin’s face.</p>

<p>Odin struck him again, his heavy signet ring carving a deep gash on Thor’s cheek. “Everything I gave you, everything I did for you, you throw in my face! You worthless pile of shit! You are no son of mine!” Odin loomed huge in front of him, towering with rage, his eye flashing with wrath, his mouth in a twisted grimace, showing all of his teeth. </p>

<p>“Sire.” It was Fandral, his voice timid and obsequious. Thor squinted, painfully turned his head, and saw his former friend kneeling on Odin’s fancy carpet. Volstagg knelt just behind him. Thor hated him, hated all of them. </p>

<p>Odin sucked in a huge breath, let it out. He turned. “I give you leave to speak.”</p>

<p>“Sire, Thor is ensorcelled.” Fandral shot Thor a pitying glance. </p>

<p>Thor bared bloody teeth in reply. “You stabbed me in the back, traitor!”</p>

<p>Fandral turned his gaze back to Odin and kept it there. “We have the proof. Consider all we found in the sordinn’s tent,” he said in his most persuasive voice. “The sordinn’s mother was a witch, you know.”</p>

<p>“It is said she taught her son her crafty ways. Maybe there was a reason her husband set her afire,” Volstagg put in helpfully. </p>

<p>Odin stepped back, gave Fandral a considering look. Then looked back at Thor, his gaze unreadable, his tone cold as ice. “Very well. Bring in the priests. He must be exorcised.”</p>

<p> </p>

<p>They bound Thor spread-eagled nude to a wooden frame. Loki’s screams echoed in his ears, his throat was still full of the taste of smoke, his lungs still heavy with poisoned air. He cursed and raved and wept while the black-robed priests paid no attention to the sounds he made. They circled around and around him, minute after minute, hour after hour, chanting prayers and shouting threats to the demons they thought possessed him, only pausing in their endless round to sprinkle him with herbs and stinging liquids that set trails of fire across his skin and agony in every open wound. </p>

<p>As their endless march went on and on he felt himself receding until they and the dark incense-filled interior of their tent seemed very far away. Sound became muffled, his skin went numb, his vision clouded over, until the only real thing was the endless howling in his head.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The rough jolting of the wagon, the hard pressure of the large trunk against his back barely registered. He was sitting crosslegged in a cart drawn by the King’s horses. It was one morning later, perhaps two. They’d kept him under guard in Tyr’s tent, hands tied, gave him water, fed him gruel. He was vaguely aware of the bustle outside as the camp prepared for travel back to Asgard.</p>

<p>Earlier this day they’d awakened him by throwing cold water in his face. His squire, gaze averted, saying nothing, had dressed him in plain clothing with almost no help from Thor himself. They’d attached his cape for warmth against the chill morning and rebound his hands. There were guards seated to either side of him. No one spoke to him, and he paid them no attention. He stared straight ahead, ignoring the way they looked at him out of the corners of their eyes. He was being punished, they all knew it, but they were uneasy at his presence and said nothing to him. </p>

<p>He stayed silent. All words were gone; he was as hollowed out and as filthy inside as a rotten log. Loki, always Loki, in his mind. Tied to the stake. Screaming. They could have left, he thought. Could have gone somewhere, far past the Alfheim border. Sif had been brave, had known what she needed to do. He, Thor, was a loathsome coward. Loki had died because of him. He should have taken Loki somewhere. Anywhere away from there. The thought cycled over and over in his mind. Always back to the stake, the kindling, the fire, the look on Loki’s face. Loki, who had never once looked toward him. Never once looked at the man who had failed him.</p>

<p>He threw up, violent heaves that convulsed his body. One of the guards, muttering beneath his breath, cleaned it away after Thor went still again. After that, he didn’t move of his own accord but swayed as the wagon made its slow progress over the rough river road. </p>

<p>Sometimes his eyes were open. Sometimes closed. Nothing mattered. Heading home to Asgard, he knew. There was nothing for him there. <strong><em>He</em></strong> was nothing, empty, lifeless. </p>

<p>At one river bend he saw the procession of wagons crammed with Alfheim’s treasures snaking behind him. The noblemen on horseback riding ahead, the wagon guards, then the long line of foot soldiers at the end laden with their loot. Ahead of him were more guards, then the King’s carriage. Tyr and the other generals were on horseback, and then at the very front, more guards leading the procession. </p>

<p>The road straightened again and headed east, moving away from the river. The river bank was treacherous near here, Thor remembered, from their initial journey. That meant nothing either.</p>

<p>Leafy tree limbs met over the bumpy roadway, a tangled embrace blotting out the sun. The filtered green light, the sounds and smells of men and horses washed past Thor as if they didn’t exist. Rage had departed before the priests were through with him, leaving a soul-deep sorrow and a sense of emptiness so vast there was no end to it. Numb, he swayed with the motion of the wagon, falling deep inside his head, his thoughts as impotent and flailing as animals trapped in tar. </p>

<p>The world seemed to fade around him, the bumping motion of the wagons hard to deal with his hands bound, didn’t matter. He barely felt it. Then –</p>

<p>BUMP CRASH! The world slewed sideways and he slid, hitting the armored body of the guard to his left. His arm shouted pain just as the other guard’s flailing body slid into him then toppled off. Boxes and barrels came crashing against him. Pain jolted through him as something splintery gouged into his left side. Horses shrieked. Someone was screaming. </p>

<p>The pain shocked him fully aware and he looked around wildly. The wagon was on its left side, the back end higher than the front, its contents spilling onto uneven ground. The man beneath him struggled wildly and shoved him off. He rolled, landing against a big wooden box. He pulled at the bonds on his wrists, but they did not give. Hampered by his bound hands, he instinctively crawled away from the wagon on his knees, stopping when a huge tree cut off his passage. He looked wildly around at the chaos. Items were strewn everywhere. The driver was on his feet nearby, cutting the horses free. One of the guards was howling, leg trapped beneath one massive wheel. Past the upturned side of the wagon he could see the men moving quickly forward. Everyone was shouting. </p>

<p>There was a broken crate of crockery nearby. He bent awkwardly sideways, scrabbling with his bound hands for a large piece of a broken bowl, the ceramic painted yellow with red flowers. It cut his fingers as he grabbed it. He struggled to his feet, ignoring the pain in his side, the wet feeling of blood. There was a space between the huge tree and a smaller one to the side. He turned sideways, and slid between the two trees. His cape caught on a branch; he pulled hard until it ripped free, stumbled, and regained his footing.</p>

<p>A sudden desire to get completely away from them seized him. But he had to pick his way carefully. If he fell they would be upon him.</p>

<p>This early in the morning there was a mist among the trees, dampening sound. He climbed over hummocks, veered around fallen logs, struggling to keep his balance. He heard men shouting. He moved more quickly, trying to keep his hold on the broken ceramic piece he still held. Behind him, he heard the crash of booted feet. Following him! </p>

<p>He took a zigzag path through the trees. The mist became thicker, more enveloping, and soon cut off all sight of anything that was not directly in front of him. Its cold damp kiss touched his face, his hands. He stopped a moment to listen.</p>

<p>All was silence. He knew Father’s men must be looking for him – but they were nowhere near.</p>

<p>He kept going. He didn’t know where he was, but it didn’t matter. As long as he wasn’t in their hands, it didn’t matter.</p>

<p>When he’d gone far enough, he sat on a fallen log and cut awkwardly at his bonds with the edge of the broken bowl. It took a long time, and he gashed his hands a couple of times during the process, but finally the ropes fell away.</p>

<p>He dropped his head to his hands. And just sat. And tried not to think.</p>

<p>After some time his body reminded him he needed water. He began walking again, and when he entered a small meadow the position of the sun oriented him. Without thinking he turned and began walking west. He’d get to the river eventually.</p>

<p>Some time later he arrived back at what must be the deserted encampment. He didn’t recognize it at first, with all the tents and wagons gone. The ground was a trampled mess, full of boot prints, and hoofprints, littered with trash and the ashy remnants of cook fires. Here, a broken tent pole, there, smashed drinking vessels. </p>

<p>He should have turned further south, he realized. He would have found the river if he’d turned south. Not <strong><em>this.</em></strong></p>

<p>As if drawn by a magnet, without thinking at all, he walked directly to where he knew it had happened. </p>

<p>Where Loki had died.</p>

<p>Where the wagons had been, deep marks cut by their wheels crisscrossed the earth. Tendrils of mist threaded across the land, hazing and blurring parts of what he saw. Droplets of moisture clung to his hair and beard. There was moisture on his eyelashes as well.</p>

<p>There was a mass of ash ahead. A light breeze sifted grey bits along the ground. He walked toward it, walked into it, stumbled as his feet scuffed up a grey cloud. He saw blackened pieces of wood and nothing else but ash. He had thought, sickened, there would be bits of bone, but there was nothing.</p>

<p>Thor fell to his knees in the ash, stretched his arms up to the sky and screamed, a pure howl of primal grief, then wrapped his arms around himself and bent until his head touched the blackened earth.</p>

<p>Thor didn’t care if anyone came. He didn’t care if they found him. He wouldn’t go with them. He had nothing, needed nothing. He’d be a feral beast in the woods before he would ever go back home.</p>

<p>“Thor….” It was Loki’s voice, a whisper in his ear.</p>

<p>He started, reared up on his knees, heart beating wildly. He whirled around, looked around in every direction. Then he laughed. He was mad. Mad or haunted. He didn’t care. “Loki?” he called out.</p>

<p>Nothing answered.</p>

<p>He got to his feet, feeling lightheaded. Ash stuck to his clothing and skin, drifted away in the breeze. He stumbled aimlessly across the desolate ground. At the edge of the forest a greenish light flickered and danced. He nearly tripped, caught himself, walked toward it. There was no way of knowing where he was, where Loki’s tent had been. He could see the marks where tentpoles had been, but, disoriented, he couldn’t tell whose tents they had belonged to.</p>

<p>But when he reached the forest’s edge he recognized where he was – this was the path he and Loki had followed in their nighttime excursion.</p>

<p>The greenish light drifted slowly ahead, appearing, disappearing, reappearing: a will-o’-the-wisp leading him on. He followed, desperate, grief-stricken, wanting to hope.</p>

<p>When he reached the clearing Loki was there, sitting on a stump. Loki stood up, but didn’t move toward him. Thor froze, staring. Loki’s eyes were huge, his face haggard, his upper arms dark with bruises. His fragile sodrinn’s clothing was torn and grimy, and some twigs were stuck in his hair. </p>

<p>He was the most beautiful person Thor had ever seen. </p>

<p>He had gone quite mad.</p>


	12. Chapter 12

He didn’t care. Hope flared. He raced to where Loki stood and took him in his arms. Loki’s skin was cool, not cold, and he was solid in Thor’s arms. Solid. Real. He smelled of fear, but there was no trace of the odor of smoke. Thor began to shake, and Loki’s arms wound around him tightly. Loki tilted his head to look up at him. His eyes were huge. “I’ll never let you go,” Thor whispered. 

Loki chuckled and blinked away tears. “Of course you will. We both need to find food, for one thing.”

Thor laughed, then sobbed, then laughed again. “You’re real. You’re real. But how?”

“I’m a witch,” he said, flinching as the words left his mouth as if expecting to be struck down. He pulled away from the embrace, took a step back, body tense with fear. “Or a fae. Mother told me I was no child of my father’s.” The words jittered then poured out swiftly, on top of each other. “I wondered who in the village actually sired me. I don’t look anything like my brothers did. It doesn’t matter I guess – she was a witch – I – ” 

“But – “ despite his shock, Thor cut in “ – But I saw you die.”

Loki relaxed slightly when Thor showed no inclination of raising a hand to him. “I wasn’t there.”

“But – how?” Thor desperately wanted an explanation. What could witches actually do?

“I can make people see things that aren’t there.” When Thor just kept staring at him, Loki stretched out one hand. His fingers formed a complex gesture, and suddenly there was a summer-brown rabbit sitting between them, watching them out of curious dark eyes, quite tame.

“Your familiar?” Thor asked, hesitating at the word.

Loki laughed nervously. “Touch it.”

Thor cautiously reached out – and the animal disappeared into a flash of green light. He snatched his hand away and held it as if he’d been burned – then slowly relaxed. He had felt nothing but air – no furry body.

Thor absorbed that. “You **_are_** a witch,” he said slowly, then stopped speaking, unable to think of anything else to say.

<img src="<https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132630622/>" alt="Illustration # 4/>

“Yes. My mother – ” Loki’s face showed old pain – “showed me how to do many things. She could do more than I – but it didn’t save her. She should have run. She should have left.” He was picking at one hand. “I can read the runes. But they don’t always speak to me. I can do – what I just did. Make people see things,” he repeated. “I can make floating lights. A few other tricks. I’ve never cursed a crop or raised a hailstorm or made anyone infertile!” he said hotly. “I think the world takes care of all of that.” He gave Thor a fierce defensive look. “And whatever they say, I did not ensorcell you!” His voice got louder. “Why would I deliberately have brought this trouble down on myself?”

“You wouldn’t,” Thor said. It was so obvious. A bitter curl of shame penetrated his half-delirious sense of joy. He’d been a fool. About everything. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead and blinked, still half-convinced of his own madness. A thought struck him. “Did you…” Thor began. Loki’s gaze was uncertain, as if waiting rejection. “Did you cause the cart to overturn?”

“No. I can’t do that. I did make the driver see a boulder that wasn’t there.” 

“Why?”

“I was following you. I wanted to see what happened to you – if you were going to be all right. You were so unhappy and I saw that they had hurt you.” He gestured to Thor’s face, and Thor raised his hand to gently touch his cheek. A healer had applied a poultice to the gash his father’s signet ring had opened. He expected his face was badly bruised and he became aware of the pain in his side from the wound he’d received when the wagon overturned. His body reminded him of all its other hurts. 

None of that mattered. Loki was still talking, and he focused intently on every word, still stunned Loki was here, was alive, was real. “So I thought – if I let you go I’d see what you wanted to do. If you’d stay with them, go back to your home. I thought you might do that. But you didn’t. You ran away.”

Loki’s expression was full of questions. Thor tried to find the answers. “I don’t belong there. Not anymore.” He groped for words. “Maybe I never did. I knew who I was supposed to be. But Baldr – he was the one everyone wanted. I didn’t have his learning. I was always getting too angry. I didn’t know what I wanted. Until I met you.” He clenched and unclenched his hands in frustration. “Why didn’t you show yourself to me earlier?”

“I wanted you to have a choice. I wanted to see what you – wanted.” 

“You weren’t really at the pyre, then? None of that happened?” Thor took in a deep breath, half-expecting the taste of smoke.

“They dragged me from my tent,” Loki said, face twisted in remembered horror. “They dragged me to the pyre.” His voice had gone flat and low, nearly a whisper. “They tied me to the stake.”

“What did you do then? How did you get loose?” Without thought, Thor took hold of Loki’s hands, and Loki grabbed on tight.

“I’m good with knots and ropes. There are ways of escaping bonds. I made them see me tied there, not moving.”

Thor suddenly remembered how Loki had looked right past him, more than once, without ever looking directly at him. Loki kept talking, his voice low, filled with remembered fear. “I made it so they couldn’t see me work the first knot free, and then the second. I keep a small knife in the sole of one shoe. I cut through the ropes binding my feet. I needed something more to confuse them so I could get away. There was a pile of new-cut wood, still green. I made them see dry wood instead. I needed the smoke.” Thor remembered how, when the fire had caught, there’d been so much smoke – too much for a fire from seasoned wood. “When Tyr lit the fire and the smoke came up,” Loki went on, “I escaped but left my image there to fool them all. I went in the other direction, behind the fire, then hid in the forest.”

Thor could still hear those screams echoing through his mind, could still feel the cloth over his face, that smothering darkness. Loki flinched and squirmed, and Thor suddenly realized he was gripping Loki’s hands way too tightly. He let go. Loki rubbed at them, then dropped his hands to his sides. Thor felt ashamed, and then, when he looked at the dark bruises on Loki’s arms, blinding fury returned. _Tyr did that,_ he thought. _Tyr and his men._ _If I ever see any of them again I’ll kill them!_

“But I heard your screams. They sounded so close! I – couldn’t see you – they had me on the ground – ”

“I can project my voice along with my image.” Loki actually looked smug, for just an instant.

Thor shook his head in amazement. “You are so powerful – why did you stay in Asgard?”

“It’s just tricks.” Loki’s tone was bitter; a flash of anger crossed his face. “Where would I go? Everyone is afraid of witches.”

Thor couldn’t argue with that truth. He kept staring at Loki in wonder.

Loki studied his face intently. “I can’t stay here. They’ll come for you.”

And there it was. His choice. 

It crashed on him like an avalanche. The decision he’d made without thinking when he’d escaped from the wagon. Leave everything behind. Give up his name, his home, his land. Give up his friends – who had betrayed him. Give up his father – the monster who had done this horrible thing, the man who had never had much use for his second son. 

Give up everything for the man he so desperately wanted to be with, the man who, in a few short weeks, had come to mean more to him than anything else in his life ever had.

He didn’t want anything from his past anymore, but the shock of the loss of everything familiar to him left him feeling stripped to the bone, gutted, struggling to be remade. Loki was watching him closely, but said nothing more.

“I never thought they’d ever do anything like this,” he said, a low growl. His eyes pleaded with Loki’s for understanding. “The medal – it was supposed to keep you safe – I’m so sorry – ” He paused, trying to interpret Loki’s cynical look. “You knew,” he said as realization dawned. You knew it wouldn’t keep you safe. You knew the moment I gave it to you.”

Loki nodded. 

“I feel so stupid,” Thor admitted. “I never thought they’d do anything like that to me.”

Loki’s expression changed for just a second – long enough for Thor to feel a crawling sense of shame and that made him again try to explain. “I believed that it would keep you safe,” he repeated urgently.

“I know you did.” Loki’s tone was gentle, understanding, and something in Thor felt he wasn’t worth this understanding. “I know this is hard for you,” Loki went on. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I think of Sif, how she escaped, how she followed the tales and legends,” Thor said slowly. “Sif knew what she wanted. I’d like to think she’s alive and happy somewhere.”

Loki nodded, but shifted restlessly. “They’ll come for you,” he repeated insistently. “I created the fog to confuse them, but I can’t do that for long.”

“No, they won’t. My father never wanted me,” Thor blurted. “My mother died giving birth to me, and he never forgave me.”

Loki again had a look in his eyes that made Thor realize Loki knew far more than he did. “You’re his only son now. They won’t let you go.” Loki’s strong tone left no room for doubt. Loki nodded, almost to himself. “What do you want?” Loki’s voice had gone low and flat but his hands trembled slightly. He laced his fingers together and let his arms drop. “Tell me.”

In one long second Thor thought many things.

Sif had known who she was and who she wanted to be.

Sif had worked it out over a long period of time, and now he must make this choice in mere seconds. 

It was suddenly as if he was back in Father’s tent, watching Father rage at him, his face contorted and ugly and full of hate for everything Thor was. He thought of Fandral and Volstagg, who had lied to him. Of Tyr’s flat snake gaze, of how he had lit the torch.

Of how the flames had caught the wood. He thought of the acrid smoke.

If Loki were not a witch his bones would have been left behind in the ash.

Thor shuddered and felt sick. All of the vague plans he’d made before war’s end to find some way to be with Loki had washed away in the harshness of the reality of how truly powerless he was. His shoulders bowed. Loki grabbed his arm, stared at him in concern. 

Thor took in a deep breath, swallowed, straightened. He’d already made his decision when he ran. “I want to be with you. Do you have a plan?"

“Go northwest to the sea. Past Alfheim, into Njordheim.” 

Loki spoke so confidently. Thor understood. “You‘ve thought of this before.”

“Oh, yes. From the moment you tried to give me the dragon brooch. From the moment you gave me the safe passage medal. I cast the runes and saw danger ahead. I knew I had to be prepared to leave everything behind, to escape.”

“I did this to you,” Thor realized with sudden, unaccustomed guilt and shame. “I took your life from you. If I hadn’t – ” He didn’t know how to say it. “If I hadn’t wanted you so much – ”. But that wasn’t right. He began again. “If I hadn’t loved you, you’d be safe now.”

Loki smiled, a brilliant smile that told Thor everything he needed to know. He returned the smile. Joy and hope began edging out the turmoil he still felt.

“If you hadn’t – loved me – ” Loki paused for a moment. He swallowed and went on, “I’d be in one of Asgard’s back streets, the bedmate of any man with a half-coin.” Loki shrugged. “And back soon enough, chopping wood. If I lived that long.”

The picture was too clear, too detailed. Thor knew it to be true. “And what did you plan, once you reached Njordheim?”

“Go further. Across the sea. You’ve heard the tales, have you not? Of green islands to the west? I thought I could seek passage there.” Thor could see that Loki wanted to believe those tales.

Thor wanted to believe them too. “I’ve heard those tales.” Indeed, Sif and he had shared many of them during afternoons in their secret place in the gardens, one of many places they had made their own territory. “But how did you plan to pay for passage?”

“Work. Of course. Manual labor or on my knees, it matters not.” 

Jealousy struck him at the picture that made in his mind. **_No. I won’t permit it._** The feeling threatened to cloud his thoughts and he fought it back.

“If needed…” Loki bent down and picked up a small rock off the ground. He threw it in the air, caught it again, opened his fingers. A golden coin gleamed in his palm. Then a green shimmer passed over it and it was just a rock again. “Only as a last resort,” he said. “I do not want to hear the word ‘witch’ used against me ever again in my life.” And now his face was haunted again, clearly remembering the death that had been intended for him. “You have to decide now,” Loki said urgently. “The fog will disappear and they’ll find their way here. You said you wanted to be with me.” Loki lifted Thor’s hand, kissed the palm, lowered it again. “Do you want to do this with me? Because I won’t wait any longer.”

Thor tangled his fingers together with Loki’s. Then Loki pulled his hand away. 

Loki turned and walked slowly away, heading deeper into the woods rather than toward the sacked and ruined city and all the people who still remained there. He didn’t look back.

Neither did Thor. He followed in Loki’s footsteps and quickly caught up with him. Loki looked over his shoulder and smiled. Thor caught his hand and returned his smile. Everything had changed. He’d failed to rescue Loki. But Loki had rescued him. And he would follow wherever Loki led.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

The air was chilly, this high in the mountains. The stream they had been following frothed and gurgled its way through a stony bottleneck. They continued to climb, and further upstream the water became calmer, its waters reflecting sunlight and the tall trees crowding its banks 

Three days travel, climbing higher each day into the mountain range north of the ruined Alfar capital, and Thor had already learned much. Yesterday, Loki had shown him the type of branches and sticks he needed to build a fish weir, how to choose the right length and width. Now, in a bend of the stream they had been following, Thor began pushing the sticks deep into the mud, forming them one at a time into a nearly-closed circle, the small opening directly in the forward push of the current. Loki commented and advised. Thor gathered up some of the long grasses and pressed them in the mud against the branches. After a time the fish weir was complete. Now all they had to do was wait, and it wasn’t long before some fish entered the trap. Thor closed off the opening with more sticks and then they had their pick of the fish they’d trapped. Loki cleaned the fish they’d chosen while Thor disassembled the weir, the remaining trapped fish now set free.

Loki built a fire and began cooking the fish. Thor watched Loki’s strong capable hands perform every task with ease. As a boy, he’d fantasized what the woodcutter’s son’s life was like. Now the reality was brought home to him – Loki’s skills and his knowledge of how to survive in nature without any other resources would make the difference between life and death for both of them.

These last days had been filled with lessons and his mind felt full with absorbing all this new information. The common people knew so much about what was needed to live! Before, he’d seen animals on the hunt and later on his plate, but what was done to them to prepare them for the table was nothing he had ever thought about before. Servants accompanying the nobles on their hunts were always on hand after the kill to clean and prepare the carcasses for transport; it was nothing he’d ever had to do. And now he must learn these skills and many more. With learning how to complete each task, he felt the same feeling of accomplishment that he had felt, when young, when mastering the tools of war.

They hadn’t seen anyone on their journey up into the mountains separating Alfheim from Njordheim, though at the beginning they’d heard distant voices, probably people from Alfheim seeking refuge away from the ruined city. Loki had chosen to make a wide circle around the city and then head northwest toward the coast. They’d reached the foothills by late afternoon the first day, always staying within earshot of the river. They’d made frequent stops to listen for the sounds of pursuit and for Loki to cast spells to keep them concealed. During one of these stops, Loki had insisted Thor allow him to inspect the shallow wound in his side, and then went in search of healing herbs. Thor had objected when Loki asked him to wait behind, but Loki had pointed out, with a hint of impatience, that he knew what he was looking for and Thor did not.

Thor had worried about Loki going off without him. His tension had increased by the moment and he was about to go search for him when Loki returned with some sharp smelling plants. He applied them to the wound in Thor’s side, tying them into place with a strip of cloth torn from Thor’s undershirt. It had stung, as all such healing herbs did. Loki had insisted that Thor lie on his side while he applied the rest of the herbs to the gash on his face, but after only a few minutes Thor, certain he had heard the sounds of pursuit, insisted they move on. The thought of being found by his father’s men, of what would happen to Loki if they found him again filled him with a sense of terror and white-hot fury. They **_had_** to keep moving.

Loki reassured Thor that if they were followed he could keep anyone from seeing them for short times. They kept moving as quickly as the increasingly mountainous landscape allowed. The deeper into the forest they’d travelled, the more lost Thor felt. And yet Loki seemed utterly sure of himself. He knew so much about how to survive in the wild, more than Thor had ever dreamed of. He explained how knowing where certain plants grew was as sure a way of telling direction as following the course of the sun and the stars. When it grew dark he made small shelters hidden away deep in the brush. They’d slept together every night in these shelters, huddled together under the warmth of Thor’s now torn and fraying cape. 

On the first night they had clung together until they both fell into an exhausted sleep, stunned by what they had undergone and focused on getting away from danger as quickly as they could.

On the second, they’d spoken little, looking into each other’s troubled eyes, each more aware of their strange surroundings than they had been the previous day. They’d given each other gentle kisses, then fallen into restless sleep. Thor had woken once from a dream of fire and ash and Loki screaming, and, starting upright, he’d found Loki twisting in the grip of a nightmare as well. He’d whispered soft words to him, his name and random words of comfort until Loki had quieted and gone back into a deeper sleep without ever truly awakening.

During the days, Loki gathered chestnuts and apples, walnuts and damsons and blackberries, and showed Thor which fruits were good to eat and which were poisonous. In the evenings, Loki set traps and each morning they’d held a small animal. Loki used his knife to kill, skin, and clean it. He made fires and built structures of branches and cooked the meat. After they were done eating they buried the bones and offal and the cold remains of the campfire and brushed the ground with branches to dispel any trace of their presence.

They’d tried to stay concealed in the forest within hearing distance of the stream as they headed further up into the mountains, but sometimes the hilly landscape forced them to walk along its banks. Thor felt almost lightheaded at times. Not since childhood had he felt so free and yet so filled with the dread of the unknown. Once he’d left childhood behind almost every hour of every day had been regimented. There had been a time and place for everything, even for carousing. Now, set adrift in this vast deep forest, having no idea whatsoever where he was or how they would get to their destination, utterly reliant on Loki’s woodcraft, he began to understand the depths of what he did not know. 

Thor had always had servants to do things for him. Even the woods surrounding the Alfar capital had been thoroughly explored by Asgard’s trackers looking for deadfalls and other traps before Odin had given permission for Thor and the noblemen to go hunting. Over the long weeks of the siege he had learned every detail about the local area, but in these green depths, without Loki’s deep knowledge of forests, without Loki beside him every step of the way, he would have been utterly lost. 

The fish was cooked, and Loki handed him his share, wrapped in edible leaves. Loki had spent every evening since they set out finding and using plant fiber to make cords and weaving them into a net bag. He used it now for some of the nuts he had gathered.

Seeing Loki now, how beautiful he was in the last of the daylight filtering through the tall trees, now aware of how strong he was, how capable he was, how clever he was, listening to him tell tales by the campfire he’d learned from his mother, about dragons and caves and fae and strange lands, filled Thor with a sense of astonishment at each new aspect of this man, and a deep and abiding sense of love.

The only information of use Thor had to offer was what he knew of Njordheim. He had never been there, but he had heard his father’s counselors speak of it, and he’d actually paid attention as stories about faraway lands were much more interesting than what was usually discussed in the council chambers. He’d shared every detail he remembered about that kingdom with Loki. 

Once they finished eating, sitting cross-legged facing each other beside the campfire, Thor asked a question that had finally come to the surface of his mind. “You said you saw danger when you cast the runes.”

“I did.” Loki’s expression turned grim. 

Thor’s heart was beating rapidly, every muscle tense. “Were you reading the runes when I came in that time? When you weren’t expecting me? You were on the floor, looking for something.” Loki’s eyes widened as Thor continued, “I looked at the carpet but didn’t see anything. But a moment before that – I saw – something – I didn’t understand. Like the mirror reflected some greenish light I didn’t see anywhere else. I didn’t think about it then. But that was the night before the war ended.”

“I was reading the runes, yes.” Loki’s gaze was questioning. “Why?”

“You should have left, right then and there!” Loki tensed at Thor’s sudden harsh tone. Thor sucked in a breath, tried to calm himself. “Why didn’t you? I put you in such danger – and when I came back the next night, after the battle – Fandral saw us. I should have realized – You should have left.”

“I wanted to see you one more time. The war was over. We were all getting ready to go home. I’d never see you again. I thought – one last time…” Loki’s voice trailed off and the admission hung between them. Stars had started to come out as the night sky headed toward full darkness. The light from the campfire cast strange shadows on Loki’s face. 

“I was a fool,” Thor said again. “You could have died. You should have left as soon as you knew you were in danger.”

“I thought the danger would be over once the war was over.” Loki held Thor’s gaze, his voice strong. “And,” he went on, his voice softening, “because what I saw didn’t make any sense.”

“What do you mean?” Thor asked.

“I saw great danger, yes. And something more, though I did not believe it at the time.”

Loki hesitated. Thor still saw it in his eyes, a look as if he could not quite believe who he was with and where they were. The sound of the crackling flames was almost more than Thor could bear, bringing him back to that moment when he had thought Loki was dying in agony. 

“What is wrong?” Loki asked, alarmed.

“Nothing!” Thor said, almost too quickly. “What did you see?”

“I saw that we faced many trials. I saw we are fated to be together, but not in any easy way. I did not understand how that was possible.”

“We have faced those trials,” Thor said slowly. “Are there more?”

“I don’t know. I saw danger – and now I hope that is passed.”

“I hope you are right.” They sat for a moment in the stillness, the usual sounds of night birds and animals reassuring him there was nothing on the approach that did not belong here. Still uneasy, filled with the sharp edge of fear that his father’s men would find them, destroy them, he blurted out, “I do not want to ever cause you to come to harm.”

“Nor I you,” Loki said. 

They reached out as one, their hands touching, clasping, holding tightly, and then Thor drew Loki into his arms. Wordlessly, they stretched out by the campfire and began exchanging gentle kisses – foreheads, cheeks, mouths. Thor carefully pulled up Loki’s shirt to caress him, avoiding the bruised areas, running his thumbs against pert nipples. Loki moaned and moved against him, and with one accord they began taking off their clothing. Loki carefully set his clothes aside, his light garments now badly ripped, tattered, and stained. 

Thor took Loki’s hand and pulled him to his feet. He grabbed his cape, also torn in places but made of tougher material than Loki’s clothing, and spread it across the flat grassy area near the fire. He turned to Loki, whose face in the flickering firelight appeared at once more beautiful and more strange than anyone he had ever known. His heart filled with both tenderness and awe. 

Loki looked up at him, a look of almost disbelieving wonder crossing his face. “It is strange, isn’t it?” Loki breathed. “We two, together, here?”

“Most strange. More like a tale than a truth. And yet, it is at it should be.” Filled with an overwhelming sense of love, Thor bent to find Loki’s lips. Loki’s lips parted, his hot wet mouth welcoming Thor’s exploring tongue. They traded hungry kisses and caresses. Thor was tempted by everything – Loki’s eager mouth, the softness of his lips, the curve of jaw and cheekbone, the texture of his curly black hair. He marked the long column of Loki’s neck with kisses and soft bites, traced out the paths of his collarbones, eliciting soft sighs and moans of pleasure as Loki moved restlessly under Thor’s explorations. Thor trailed his calloused fingers down Loki’s sides, careful of the still-dark bruises marring the skin over his ribs, swallowing his rage against Tyr and those others who had put them there. Loki dug his fingers into Thor’s back, mapping shoulders, back, and buttocks, molding his hands upon the hard plains and valleys of muscle, learning the geography of Thor’s war-scarred skin, carefully avoiding the now-healing wound in Thor’s side. Thor pulled Loki even closer and their bodies met skin to skin, their flesh heating in defiance of the cool evening air.

Then Thor knelt before Loki, feeling the upward slide of Loki’s hands on his back before the other man let go. Thor pressed his lips against the concave curve of Loki’s belly just above the navel and caressed everything he could reach, avoiding the bruised and sharply-delineated ribs. Loki gasped and grabbed Thor’s shoulders. Thor used his lips and tongue to explore, learning all of Loki’s reactions, delighting in every shuddering intake of breath, every soft broken sound. He was hard himself, but not yet urgent. He could wait. He had made up his mind to do this, and though that old instinctive warning in the back of his mind insisted this was forbidden, this new desire overcame his fear. 

As he kissed and explored Loki’s hands moved restlessly, then one settled on Thor’s shoulder, the other rising, carding through Thor’s hair, tangling in its length. Loki’s hard cock brushed against Thor’s chest and Loki keened a quickly bitten-off sound of pleasure. Thor spit on his hand, wrapped it around Loki’s cock and pulled gently. He looked up. Loki’s eyes were closed; his lips slightly parted. Loki’s grip tightened on Thor’s shoulders. Thor bent, saw Loki’s cock rigid in its need, inhaled the thick scent, and then, casting away all fears of being thought unmanly, licked the cockhead. 

Loki started, cried out, pulled back. Thor leaned back enough to look up into Loki’s downturned face. Loki’s eyes had gone wide. “My lord,” Loki said, after an indrawn breath.

“No,” Thor said, conviction in his words. “No more. I’m not your ‘lord’. I’m just Thor.”

Loki blinked at him, startled beyond words, but after Thor opened his mouth, bent down and placed his open lips on Loki’s cock, then slowly took it in, Loki made such wanton sounds that Thor found himself filled with the joy of giving Loki pleasure.

Thor felt awkward, untried. He did his best to copy the things Loki had done to him with his mouth but he wasn’t able to get all of Loki’s length inside his own mouth. There was more he needed to learn. Loki began whispering directions, urging him on to different motions of lips and tongue and jaw, and he did his best to comply. The intimacy, the nearness, the scent, the heat, intoxicated his senses. His cock, begging and needy, cried for attention. But he didn’t stop what he was doing, resisted the temptation to touch himself. “I’m close,” Loki moaned. “Stop, let go.” Surprised, Thor did, and Loki grabbed his own cock, jerked rapidly, and spilled. 

Thor watched, aroused beyond measure, and strangely disappointed he’d been denied the experience. Panting, Loki sank to his knees, then back on his heels. He met Thor’s gaze. “Thank you,” he said, voice uneven. “How do _you_ feel?” Loki said, and Thor recognized he was concerned that Thor would regret doing this.

“I am fine,” he said. “It was…” His voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure what to say, or if indeed, anything needed to be said. Then he knew. “You didn’t have to do that. Pull away. Next time, don’t.”

Something in Loki relaxed, something tense became calm. He gave Thor a brilliant, loving smile, which Thor returned. “Ah, Thor… “ He glanced down then back to Thor’s face. “You say you feel fine. But you could feel much better.” Loki gave Thor a wicked smile.

Thor’s cock, impossibly, became harder at the way Loki slowly licked his lips. Loki inched forward and touched Thor’s shoulders, guiding him to lie down on the cape. Loki knelt between his legs, grasped Thor’s throbbing shaft and gave it a teasingly soft caress, easing the foreskin back. Thor hissed, his hips jerking. Loki bent over him and licked his cockhead, then probed the slit with the tip of his tongue, and Thor grabbed for any part of Loki that he could reach. Loki ran the flat of his tongue over the tip of Thor’s cock. Thor groaned and thrust up while Loki parted his lips and took Thor’s length all the way to the back of his throat. Wet hot pleasure, blinding, ecstatic, blanked any thought. He thrust and Loki kept up in timeless movement, using his tongue against the underside, sucking strongly, then softly, each motion bringing Thor to greater heights, and when climax ripped through him he heard himself shout Loki’s name.

Loki moved to lie beside him, then to embrace him. They lay together for long moments, heartbeats quieting, bodies satiated. Thor slit his eyes open. Loki was asleep, or appeared to be, and in the dim light from the dying fire he looked more beautiful than anything Thor had ever seen.

Sometime after that they took care of the remains of the meal. When Loki put his trousers back on and reached for the tattered remains of his shirt, Thor gave him his own undershirt; a sturdy garment woven for a soldier, not a fragile piece of cloth meant for a sordinn. “It will be warmer.” When Loki hesitated, Thor put on his tunic. “This is enough for me.”

Something else in Loki seemed to relax, and his smile was warmer still. He put on the overlarge, overlong shirt. Thor took a moment to just look at him. The difference from the way he looked in the flimsy sordinn clothing to how he looked in the plain undershirt was startling. Loki looked more like the woodcutter he was than the sordinn he had been. Thor’s smile widened. It pleased him immensely to see Loki wearing something of his. 

Loki had raised his brows in response to Thor’s stare. Thor held out his hands and Loki smiled and moved to embrace him. They stood for a long moment, just holding each other. Thor kissed Loki’s forehead; Loki responded with a soft kiss to Thor’s lips. A chill breeze began sifting through the trees promising the approach of winter and, every task now done, they settled into the low shelter Thor had helped Loki build and fell asleep.

The open land near the bank of the stream narrowed the next day. The trees became shorter, the plants scrubbier. The stream itself grew smaller by the hour. By late morning they reached a rushing waterfall and began to climb the slippery rock.

It was cautious, dangerous work, and they were soaked and shivering by the time they got to the source of the stream, a spring-fed mountain pool. Peaks rose to either side, but ahead was open air. They looked at each other in triumph at the knowledge they’d reached the mountain pass. Threading their way through rocky ground they kept moving and by mid-afternoon reached the point where the land fell away again.

Looking down, they saw the land descending in gentle hills. In the distance was the glint of a large body of water, bigger than the largest lake Thor had ever seen. So big he couldn’t even see the further shore. On the near shore Thor could see cleared land, fields and, when he squinted, what looked like buildings. 

“Njordheim,” Thor said with awe.

Loki surveyed the land, looking for potential difficulties, which he pointed out to Thor. “We’ll need to spend at least one more night on the mountain. Perhaps two, depending on any obstacles I can’t see from here. And then we’ll reach the town.”

He turned to study Thor, then took hold of Thor’s now-tattered and filthy cape. “You can’t continue to wear this. By its color, anyone who sees it will recognize you as royalty.” 

“We could wait until we’re closer. It’ll be cold at night.”

Loki shook his head. “There may be dwellers in these mountains, or else trappers, hunters. Just because we haven’t run across anyone so far does not mean there’s no one here. I can keep hiding us, but we will have to meet with other people eventually. If you’re seen wearing this, they won’t believe we’re refugees from Alfheim. They’ll ask questions and eventually word will get to your father, probably by the next boat out.”

Thor stripped off the cape and draped it over one arm. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“I have an idea.” Loki turned and headed to the west of the pass to where the land became more rugged. Thor stopped when he did. A deep crevice, barely the width of a man, cut its way down the mountainside. There was something at the bottom, trapped by a large boulder and partially concealed by brush. He bent to look, saw antlers, saw bones.

Loki contemplated the remains of the dead deer. “Drop your cape on top of it – cover the antlers if you can. If any of the bones stay visible, maybe they’ll think it’s you, and that the vultures picked the bones clean. No one’s going to climb down there, not unless they are ordered to do so – and if they are skilled climbers. If they even find this place at all.”

Thor looked down into the depths of the crevice, studying the rough surfaces and the position of the bones. He fingered the fabric of the cape once, so many memories flashing through his head he could barely grasp them – court occasions, visits from foreign dignitaries, and he and Baldr standing at attention, displaying Asgard’s wealth and might.

He looked at the stained and filthy fabric he was holding and realized it meant nothing to him. He’d already made this decision when he chose to follow Loki. Another memory, a recent memory, whispered to be heard. “Remember, that time in the meadow? When we looked up into the sky and saw the outlines of The Dancer and the Prince written in the stars?” he said in a low voice, turning his head to meet Loki’s eyes. “Of how she’d been rescued. How they’d escaped.”

“How they died, falling off a cliff,” Loki said, in a voice equally hushed.

Thor saw by his gaze the Loki understood what this moment meant. He knelt at the edge of the crevice, holding the cape in his right hand. He considered the angle, considered the stillness of the air, then rolled the cape up in the hopes it wouldn’t snag on an outcrop on the way down.

He let go. Let his old life go. Let his old life die.

The cape fluttered as it fell, a streamer of dirty brownish-red, and landed on the front half of the deer skeleton. The brush obscured most of the hindquarters. Some bones were visible, like curved whitish sticks among the mountain scrub. If anyone looked closely they’d see the bones weren’t human. But they’d have to move the cape to be sure there was nothing else beneath it.

By that time, he hoped, he and Loki would be long gone.

Loki contemplated the result, then searched around for some largish rocks. He aimed and dropped them, one after another. He had very good aim. More than half of them landed on exposed bone, and the result was good enough, Thor thought, to obscure just what type of skeleton lay below.

Thor stared down at his cape. “I was such a fool!” he muttered. Loki laid a hand on his shoulder, and he turned. Loki’s eyes were full of concern. “A fool,” Thor said in a more normal tone, “who didn’t even know his own heart.” 

“Does it matter now? Who we were? What we were?”

“No.” Thor didn’t look behind him, didn’t need to look down into the crevice for one last glance at his royal cape. That life was gone.

He felt lighter, cleaner. He took Loki’s hand, then pulled him into a close embrace, into a deep and passionate kiss. 

A full day later, halfway down the other side of the mountain, Loki moved away from the course he’d set. “I want to take a look over there,” he explained to Thor. He led him through a thick growth of trees out onto a ridge. There now, the Njordheim capital was clearly visible by the waterside, a long finger of a fjord extending to the east, its deep blue waters glistening in the afternoon light.

Thor slung one arm around Loki’s shoulders. As small as toys, but still visible, three dragon ships lay at dock.

They turned, as one, to smile at each other. Then, aware the afternoon was slipping away, Loki led them back to where they had diverged from their path and then downward again, heading toward their new life.


	14. Chapter 14

Epilogue

Thor shuddered, choked, blinked away the tears in his eyes. Disoriented, he stared down at white sand, leapt to his feet, and reached instinctively for Mjolnir. He looked around wildly. The thousand colors of the crystalline prison blurred past his vision and he realized he was back in the cave. Patches of frost clung to nearby stones and he shuddered in the cold. “Loki!” he shouted, looking around again. 

Loki was suddenly right there in front of him.

He looked so very young – just as he had looked those few years before Thor’s aborted coronation. He was watching Thor intently. He was dressed in flimsy sordinns’ clothing, but an instant later it shifted into the black and silver outfit he’d worn on that ill-fated trip to Jotunheim.

Thor lunged forward, grabbed him, held his solid warm body tightly. Loki’s arms wound around Thor’s back and he rested his head on Thor’s shoulder.

“How many times,” Thor choked, cleared his throat, went on raggedly, “How many times do I have to watch you die? If you hadn’t have been able to save yourself, they would have burned you.” One of Loki’s hands began making comforting circles against Thor’s back as the other combed its way through Thor’s hair. Thor went on, “On the Bifrost when you let go – on Svartalfheim –”

“I regret that now,” Loki broke in, his voice ragged as well. “I regret so very much.”

They let go of the embrace, stepped back to study each other. Thor, profoundly shaken, gasped out, “You – ” and couldn’t go on as memories flooded into his mind in quick succession. The two of them, in Njordheim, telling all they met they were refugees from Alfheim; that they were half-brothers, Thor the eldest from one mother, Loki the younger from another. Overcoming Njordhir suspicions about the people pouring in from Alfheim seeking refuge. Hiring themselves out for labor, talking their way into being hired on one of the boats. Going to the new land. 

More fragments – Loki’s hair, grown long. Once they reached the new land, both of them braiding thin plaits in their hair, in the style most of the men of Njordheim wore. Practicing the Njordheim accent in order to further erase any traces of their pasts.

Thor pulled in a deep breath, letting it go again, his breath ghosting in the frigid air, and searched for other memories. All he got were chaotic glimpses. “What happened to them? To us?”

“We lived our lives,” Loki said, his voice almost flat. Almost calm. “We died. We were reborn. Time is an endless cycle, and there are realities overlain upon other realities, existing simultaneously. We are here and now. We are there and then.” Loki’s eyes were haunted.

“I was a fool,” Thor said, feeling the bitter bite of shame. “I didn’t know what I had, what I wanted.”

“I thought myself a fool too, for loving a Prince, the son of the King. Who was I, to dream such dreams?” Loki gave a tiny shake of his head. 

“I failed you.” Anguish made his voice harsh. “I could have lost you.”

“And I have failed you as well. Betrayed you.” Loki’s brows were drawn together in pain, his head bowed. Thor reached for him and they tangled their fingers together. 

“I was the younger brother,” Thor went on, trying to convey to Loki how much he had learned, grasping for words. “I was overlooked. Not valued. Every time I looked into Father’s eyes I knew he was wishing I had died and Baldr had lived. I never understood – ” Thor broke off again then gave a harsh laugh. “I never understood how you felt. What it felt like to you to live in my shadow. How ignorant and arrogant I was. I’ve never understood many things.” 

“Nor I,” Loki said. His hands pressed tightly against Thor’s. “And I have come to realize that thinking I know everything is a deadly trap that has led me time and again to disaster.” He looked down. Thor let go of one of Loki’s hands and rested his fingers on Loki’s chin, pushing slightly until Loki looked up at him. He pressed a gentle kiss against Loki’s lips. They wound their arms around each other and stayed huddled together for a long moment. 

Loki suddenly inhaled sharply and stumbled back. Thor grabbed for him, fingers closing on nothing. 

Loki’s form stuttered, winked out, blurred back into existence, refocused, but only partially. He was changing again, becoming new. Now a woman, black hair flowing to her waist.

“Who did this to you? Who did you anger so much?” Thor demanded.

Loki’s eyes went blank, then bleak. “I do not know.”

“How many tales will you tell?”

“I do not know.” Her eyes lost their focus. She tilted her head to listen.

Thor listened intently, hearing nothing at first, and then the ghost of a whisper became audible. He remembered it immediately – the voice that had awakened him from a dream and spoke of Loki and sent him on his quest here. A voice he knew and yet could not recognize. 

“You hear it too.” Loki’s eyes were wide.

“I do,” Thor said. “It seems I should know who this is.”

“I too,” Loki said. “But when I try to recognize the voice – something pushes me back. Whoever it is, it knows both of us.” She interlaced her fingers, her gaze growing distant, listening intently. “Tell us what you want from us.” Her eyes slid shut, and when Thor reached out again he grasped both of Loki’s ice-cold now-Jotunn hands. Loki was male again. The speed and randomness of the transformations left him struggling with confusion, but he refocused almost instantly on things as they were at this very moment.

Loki’s eyes remained closed and when he spoke again it was in a monotone. “As many tales as it takes for us to understand. We both have much to learn. I as much, or more, than you.” He went on, his tone insistent. He wasn’t talking to Thor. “I know this – we must live these tales together.” His red eyes flew open, laser-focused on Thor. “You will have to live these tales with me.” He spoke as if intoning a ritual. “Will you hear them?”

“Will that break the spell?”

Loki vanished. “Yesssss….” The word floated, attenuated, echoed against the cavern walls. 

Thor leapt to his feet, looking around wildly, his fists clenched, wanting an enemy within their grip. There was dust in the center of the circle, then glassy color. “I will hear them!” he shouted. “I will live them!” 

Loki reappeared instantly, looking exactly as he had before he vanished and Thor had gone on this quest. 

“Will you swear to this?” Loki reached out his hand and Thor clasped it. Loki’s ice-cold hand gripped hard, squeezing Thor’s fingers together. 

“Yes.” Thor spoke it in the tone of a solemn oath. “I so swear.” Then he stepped back, sat down on the rock. “I will listen to them all. Every one. For as long as it takes.”

Loki reached up, snatched a runestone from the empty air. “Then listen.”

He tossed the runestone on the ground between them. And began a new tale…

In the otherwhere, in the otherwhen, in a place between worlds, Frigga sat at her loom, while all around her in the liminal spaces between realms her sons and her other selves lived and died and lived again. 

“There is so much you both must remember, my sons. There is so much you must learn.” 

She took a moment to consider the life they had just relived – a life in which neither of them had ever known her, and for that she had a brief moment of grief. But this life had been a good choice. They had come to peace with each other while still young.

A good beginning, and she began to hope that the journey might be short.

“The nexus is here,” she whispered, hoping they would hear her, if only in their dreams. “And we three are the pivot on which all must revolve. There is so much we all must learn if we are to prevail. Loki, show Thor and yourself only the lives you both need to understand in order to regain your full trust and love for each other. Because we all must be ready if everything that is and will be is to survive and continue.…” 

She paused to listen. **They** flickered around her, the Three, each speaking only one word at a time until the sentence was a completed concept. Frigga waited patiently until the next pattern bloomed in her imagination. She contemplated the new pattern then set her hands to the task. 

Frigga continued weaving, the Norns guiding her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks again to:  
> The organizers of the Thorki Big Bang!  
> To my betas, Muriel_Perun and Tenaya for helping me dig down deep into the heart of this story and reconstruct it in a way that got to the heart of what I wanted to convey.  
> To Racconsito, for their gorgeous art and comments all along the way. And my apologies to Racconsito as well for never figuring out how to properly embed art in a story. I tried every combination of ways I could think of, both in rtf and in html; I read and followed every tutorial I could find on the subject, I tried doing so in two different browsers, and everything I tried just made the situation worse. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s some issue with my computer that I have not been able to figure out. I apologize for the messy links, and hope they everyone who reads this story also clicks on the links to see the artwork.  
> And speaking of artwork, in preparation to doing the four illustrations, Racconsito also made three moodboards and I loved them so much they agreed to allow me to include the links. Here they are:
> 
> <img src="<https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132444526/>" alt="Moodboard # 1/>
> 
> <img src="<https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49132444556/>" alt="Moodboard # 2/>
> 
> <img src="<https://www.flickr.com/photos/185742813@N06/49131963488/>" alt="Moodboard # 3/>


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